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Their  Majesties'  Servants 

Volume  I. 


ANNALS  OF  THE 
ENGLISH  STAGE 

OR 

THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 


BY 
JOHN  DORAN,  LL.D. 


VOLUME  I 


BIGELOW,  BROWN  &  CO.,  Inc. 
NEW  YORK 


Contents 


I.     Prologue i 

II.     The  Decline  and  Fall  of  the  Players      34 

III.  The  "Boy  Actresses"  and  the  "Young 

Ladies" 55 

IV.  The  Gentlemen  of  the  King's  Company      88 
V.     Thomas  Betterton 100 

VI.    "Exeunt"  and  "Enter"    ....     125 

VII.     Elizabeth  Barry 137 

VI II.    "Their    First    Appearance    on    this 

Stage  " .     149 

IX.    The  Dramatic  Poets  .        .        .        .168 

X.     Professional  Authors        .        .        .        .196 
XI.     The  Dramatic  Authoresses      .        .        .219 
XII^    The    Audiences    of    the     Seventeenth 

Century 228 

XIII.  A  Seven  Years'  Rivalry  ....     254 

XIV.  The    United    and    the    Disunited   Com- 

panies         287 

XV.     Union,  Strength,  Prosperity    .        .        .     294 
XVI.    Competition,  and  What  Camr  of  It       .     313 
XVII.    The   Progress  of  James  Quin,   and  De- 
cline OF  Barton  Booth          .        .        -331 
XVIII.    Barton  Booth 336 


Their   Majesties*   Servants 


CHAPTER  I. 

PROLOGUE 

The  period  of  the  origin  of  the  drama  is  an  un- 
settled question,  but  it  has  been  fixed  at  an  early 
date,  if  we  may  accept  the  theory  of  a  recent  writer, 
who  suggests  that  Moses  described  the  Creation  from 
a  visionary  pictorial  representation,  which  occupied 
seven  days,  from  the  commencement  to  the  close  of 
the  spectacle  ! 

Among  the  most  remote  of  the  Chinese  traditions, 
the  theatre  holds  a  conspicuous  place.  In  Cochin- 
China,  there  is  at  this  day  a  most  primitive  char- 
acter about  actors,  authors,  and  audience.  The 
governor  of  the  district  enjoys  the  least  rude  seat 
in  the  sylvan  theatre  ;  he  directs  the  applause  by 
tapping  with  his  fingers  on  a  little  drum,  and  as,  at 
this  signal,  his  secretaries  fling  strings  full  of  cash  on 
to  the  stage,  the  performance  suffers  from  continual 
interruption.  For  the  largesse  distributed  by  the 
patron  of  the  drama,  and  such  of  the  spectators  as 
choose  to  follow  his  example,  the  actors  and  actresses 

I 


2  THEIR  MAJESTIES*  SERVANTS 

furiously  scramble,  while  the  poor  poet  stands  by, 
sees  his  best  situations  sacrificed,  and  is  none  the 
richer,  —  by  way  of  compensation. 

In  Greece,  the  profession  of  actor  was  accounted 
honourable.  In  Rome,  it  was  sometimes  a  well-re- 
quited, but  also  a  despised  vocation.  During  the 
decade  of  years,  when  that  aristocratic  democrat, 
Pisistratus,  held  power,  the  drama  first  appeared  (it  is 
said)  at  Athens.  It  formed  a  portion  of  the  religion 
of  the  state.  The  theatre  was  a  temple  in  which, 
rudely  enough  at  first,  the  audience  were  taught  how 
the  will,  not  only  of  men  but  of  gods,  must  neces- 
sarily submit  to  the  irresistible  force  of  Destiny. 
This  last  power,  represented  by  a  combination  of  the 
lyric  and  epic  elements,  formed  the  drama  which  had 
its  origin  in  Greece  alone.  In  such  a  sense  the  Sem- 
itic races  had  no  drama  at  all,  while  in  Greece  it  was 
almost  exclusively  of  Attic  growth,  its  religious  char- 
acter being  especially  supported,  on  behalf  of  the 
audience,  by  the  ever  sagacious,  morally  and  fer- 
vently pious  chorus.  Lyric  tragedy  existed  before 
the  age  of  Thespis  and  Pisistratus  ;  but  a  spoken 
tragedy  dates  from  that  period  alone,  above  five  cen- 
turies earlier  than  the  Christian  era  ;  and  the  new 
theatre  found  at  once  its  Prynne  and  its  Collier  in 
that  hearty  hater  of  actors  and  acting,  the  legislative 
Solon. 

At  the  great  festivals,  when  the  theatres  were 
opened,  the  expenses  of  the  representations  were 
borne  partly  by  the  state  and  partly  by  certain 
wealthy  officials.  The  admission  was  free,  until  over- 
crowding produced  fatal  accidents.  To  diminish  the 
latter,  an  entrance  fee  of  two  oboli,  three  and  one- 


PROLOGUE  3 

fourth  pence,  was  established,  but  the  receipts  were 
made  over  to  the  poor.  From  morning  till  dewy 
eve  these  roofless  buildings,  capable  of  containing, 
on  an  average,  twenty  thousand  persons,  were  filled 
from  the  ground  to  the  topmost  seat,  in  the  sweet 
springtide,  sole  theatrical  season  of  the  Greeks. . 

Disgrace  and  disfranchisement  were  the  penalties 
laid  upon  the  professional  Roman  actor.  He  was 
accounted  infamous,  and  was  excluded  from  the 
tribes.  Nevertheless,  the  calling  in  Italy  had  some- 
thing of  a  religious  quality.  Livy  tells  us  of  a  com- 
pany of  Etruscan  actors,  ballet-pantomimists,  how- 
ever, rather  than  comedians,  who  were  employed  to 
avert  the  anger  of  the  gods,  which  was  manifested 
by  a  raging  pestilence.  These  Etruscans  were,  in 
their  way,  the  originators  of  the  drama  in  Italy. 
That  drama  was,  at  first,  a  dance,  then  a  dance  and 
song ;  with  them  was  subsequently  interwoven  a 
story.  From  the  period  of  Livius  Andronicus  (b.  c. 
240)  is  dated  the  origin  of  an  actual  Latin  theatre, 
the  glory  of  which  was  at  its  highest  in  the  days  of 
Attius  and  Terence,  but  for  which  a  dramatic  liter- 
ature became  extinct  when  the  mimes  took  the  place 
of  the  old  comedy  and  tragedy. 

Even  in  Rome  the  skill  of  the  artist  sometimes 
freed  him  from  the  degradation  attached  to  the  exer- 
cise of  his  art.  Roscius,  the  popular  comedian, 
contemporary  with  Cicero,  was  elevated  by  Sulla  to 
the  equestrian  dignity,  and  with  .^sopus,  the  great 
tragedian,  enjoyed  the  friendship  of  Tully,  and  of 
Tully's  friends,  the  wisest  and  the  noblest  in  Rome. 
Roscius  and  ^Esopus  were  what  would  now  be  called 
scholars  and  gentlemen,  as  well  as  unequalled  artists, 


4  THEIR  MAJESTIES*  SERVANTS 

whom  no  amount  of  application  could  appal  when 
they  had  to  achieve  a  triumph  in  their  art.  An 
Austrian  emperor  once  "  encored "  an  entire  opera 
(the  "  Matrimonio  Segreto ") ;  but,  according  to 
Cicero,  his  friend  iEsopus  so  delighted  his  enthusi- 
astic audience,  that  in  one  piece  they  encored  him 
"millies,"  a  thousand,  or  perhaps  an  indefinite 
number  of  times.  The  Roman  tragedian  lived  well, 
and  bequeathed  a  vast  fortune  to  his  son.  Roscius 
earned  jC^2  daily,  and  he,  too,  amassed  great  wealth. 

The  mimes  were  satirical  burlesques,  parts  of 
which  were  often  improvised,  and  had  some  affinity 
to  the  pasquinades  and  harlequinades  of  modern 
Italy.  The  writers  were  the  intimate  friends  of 
emperors ;  the  actors  were  infamous.  Caesar  induced 
Decius  Laberius,  an  author  of  knightly  rank,  to  ap- 
pear  on  the  stage  in  one  of  these  pieces ;  and  Labe- 
rius obeyed,  not  for  the  sake  of  the  honorarium, 
;^4,ooo,  but  from  dread  of  disobeying  an  order  from 
so  powerful  a  master.  The  unwilling  actor  profited 
by  his  degradation  to  satirise  the  policy  of  Caesar, 
who  did  not  resent  the  liberty,  but  restored  Laberius 
to  the  rank  and  equestrian  privileges  which  he  had 
forfeited  by  appearing  on  the  stage.  Laberius,  how- 
ever, never  recovered  the  respect  of  his  countrymen, 
not  even  of  those  who  had  applauded  him  the  most 
loudly. 

The  licentious  pantomimists  were  so  gross  in  their 
performances,  that  they  even  disgusted  Tiberius ; 
who  forbade  them  from  holding  any  intercourse,  as 
the  professional  histriones  or  actors  of  the  drama 
had  done,  with  Romans  of  equestrian  or  senatorial 
dignity.    It  was  against  the  stage  exclusively  given  up 


PROLOGUE  5 

to  their  scandalous  exhibitions,  that  the  Christian 
fathers  levelled  their  denunciations.  They  would 
have  approved  a  ♦*  well-trod  stage,"  as  Milton  did, 
and  the  object  attributed  to  it  by  Aristotle,  —  but 
they  had  only  anathemas  for  that  horrible  theatre 
where  danced  and  postured  Bathyllus  and  Hylas, 
and  Pylades,  Latinus,  and  Nero,  and  even  that  grace- 
ful Paris  whom  Domitian  slew  in  his  jealousy,  and  of 
whom  Martial  wrote  that  he  was  the  great  glory  and 
grief  of  the  Roman  theatre,  and  that  all  Venuses 
and  Cupids  were  buried  for  ever  in  the  sepulchre  of 
Paris,  the  darling  of  old  Rome. 

In  this  our  England,  minds  and  hearts  had  ever 
been  open  to  dramatic  impressions.  The  Druidical 
rites  contained  the  elements  of  dramatic  spectacle. 
The  pagan  Saxon  era  had  its  dialogue-actors,  or  buf- 
foons ;  and  when  the  period  of  Christianity  succeeded, 
its  professors  and  teachers  took  of  the  evil  epoch 
what  best  suited  their  purposes.  In  narrative  dia- 
logue, or  song,  they  dramatised  the  incidents  of  the 
lives  of  the  saints,  and  of  One  greater  than  saints ; 
and  they  thus  rendered  intelligible  to  listeners,  what 
would  have  been  incomprehensible  if  it  had  been 
presented  to  them  as  readers. 

In  castle  hall,  before  farmhouse  fires,  on  the 
bridges,  and  in  the  market-places,  the  men  who  best 
performed  the  united  offices  of  missionary  and  actor 
were,  at  once,  the  most  popular  preachers  and  play- 
ers of  the  day.  The  greatest  of  them  all,  St.  Adhelm, 
when  he  found  his  audience  growing  weary  of  too 
much  serious  exposition,  would  take  his  small  harp 
from  under  his  robes,  and  would  strike  up  a  nar- 
rative song,  that  would  render  his  hearers  hilarious. 


6  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

The  mixture  of  the  sacred  and  profane  in  the 
early  dialogues  and  drama  prevailed  for  a  lengthened 
period.  The  profane  sometimes  superabounded,  and 
the  higher  Church  authorities  had  to  look  to  it.  The 
monotony  of  monastic  life  had  caused  the  wander- 
ing gleemen  to  be  too  warmly  welcomed  within  the 
monastery  circles,  where  there  were  men  who  cheer- 
fully employed  their  energies  in  furnishing  new  songs 
and  lively  "  patter  "  to  the  strollers.  It  was,  doubt- 
less, all  well  meant ;  but  more  serious  men  thought 
it  wise  to  prohibit  the  indulgence  of  this  peculiar 
literary  pursuit.  Accordingly,  the  Council  of  Clover- 
shoe,  and  decrees  bearing  the  king's  mark,  severally 
ordained  that  actors,  and  other  vagabonds  therein 
named,  should  no  longer  have  access  to  monasteries, 
and  that  no  priest  should  either  play  the  gleeman 
himself,  or  encourage  the  members  of  that  disrep- 
utable profession,  by  turning  ale-poets,  and  writing 
songs  for  them. 

It  is  a  singular  fact,  that  one  of  our  earliest  thea- 
tres had  Geoffrey,  a  monk,  for  its  manager,  and 
Dunstable  —  immortalised  by  Silvester  Daggerwood 
—  for  a  locality.  This  early  manager,  who  flourished 
about  1 1 19,  rented  a  house  in  the  town  just  named, 
when  a  drama  was  represented,  which  had  St.  Kath- 
erine  for  a  heroine,  and  her  whole  life  for  a  subject. 
This  proto-theatre  was,  of  course,  burnt  down  ;  and 
the  managing  monk  withdrew  from  the  profession, 
more  happy  than  most  ruined  managers,  in  this,  that 
he  had  his  cell  at  St.  Albans,  to  which  he  could  re- 
tire, and  therein  find  a  home  for  the  remainder  of  his 
days. 

Through    a   course   of    mysteries,    miracle-plays, 


PROLOGUE  7 

illustrating  Scripture,  history,  legend,  and  the  suffer- 
ings of  the  martyrs,  moralities  in  which  the  vices 
were  in  antagonism  against  the  virtues,  and  chronicle- 
plays,  which  were  history  in  dialogue,  we  finally 
arrive  at  legitimate  tragedy  and  comedy.  Till  this 
last  and  welcome  consummation,  the  Church  as 
regularly  employed  the  stage  for  religious  ends,  as  the 
old  heathen  magistrates  did  when  they  made  village 
festivals  the  means  of  maintaining  a  religious  feeling 
among  the  villagers.  Professor  Browne,  in  his  "  His- 
tory of  Greek  Classical  Literature,"  remarks  :  "  The 
believers  in  a  pure  faith  can  scarcely  understand  a 
religious  element  in  dramatic  exhibitions.  They  who 
knew  that  God  is  a  spirit,  and  that  they  who  worship 
him  must  worship  him  in  spirit  and  in  truth,  feel 
that  his  attributes  are  too  awful  to  permit  any  ideas 
connected  with  deity  to  be  brought  into  contact  with 
the  exhibition  of  human  passions.  Religious  poetry 
of  any  kind,  except  that  which  has  been  inspired,  has 
seldom  been  the  work  of  minds  sufficiently  heavenly 
and  spiritual  to  be  perfectly  successful  in  attaining 
the  end  of  poetry,  namely,  the  elevation  of  the 
thoughts  to  a  level  with  the  subject.  It  brings  God 
down  to  man,  instead  of  raising  man  to  him.  It 
causes  that  which  is  most  offensive  to  religious  feel- 
ing, and  even  good  taste,  irreverent  familiarity  with 
subjects  which  cannot  be  contemplated  without  awe. 
But  a  religious  drama  would  be,  to  those  who  realise 
to  their  own  minds  the  spirituality  of  God,  nothing 
less  than  'anthropomorphism  and  idolatry.  "  Chris- 
tians of  a  less  advanced  age,  and  believers  in  a  more 
sensuous  creed,  were  able  to  view  with  pleasure  the 
mystery -plays  in   which   the   gravest  truths  of  the 


8  THEIR  MAJESTIES'   SERVANTS 

gospel  were  dramatically  represented ;  nay,  more, 
just  as  the  ancient  Athenians  could  look  even  upon 
their  gross  and  licentious  comedy,  as  forming  part  of 
a  religious  ceremony,  so  could  Christians  imagine  a 
religious  element  in  profane  dramas  which  repre- 
sented in  a  ludicrous  light  subjects  of  the  most  holy 
character." 

Mysteries  kept  the  stage  from  the  Norman  to  the 
Tudor  era.  The  moralities  began  to  displace  them 
during  the  reign  of  Henry  VI.,  who  was  a  less  bene- 
ficial patron  of  the  stage  than  that  Richard  III,  who 
has  himself  retained  a  so  unpleasant  possession  of  the 
scene.  Actors  and  dramatists  have  been  ungrateful 
to  this  individual,  who  was  their  first  practically  use- 
ful patron.  Never,  previous  to  Richard's  time,  had 
an  English  prince  been  known  to  have  a  company  of 
players  of  his  own.  When  Duke  of  Gloucester,  a 
troop  of  such  servants  was  attached  to  his  household. 
Richard  was  unselfish  toward  these  new  retainers  ; 
whenever  he  was  too  "  busy,"  or  "  not  i'  the  vein  "  to 
receive  instruction  or  amusement  at  their  hands,  he 
gave  them  license  to  travel  abroad,  and  forth  went 
the  mirthful  company,  from  county  to  county,  man- 
sion to  mansion,  from  one  corporation  hall  and  from 
one  inn  yard  to  another,  playing  securely  under  the 
sanction  of  his  name,  winning  favour  for  themselves, 
and  a  great  measure  of  public  regard,  probably,  for 
their  then  generous  and  princely  master. 

The  fashion  thus  set  by  a  prince  was  followed  by 
the  nobility,  and  it  led  to  a  legal  recognition  of  the 
actor  and  his  craft,  in  the  royal  license  of  1572, 
whereby  the  players  connected  with  noble  houses 
were  empowered  to  play  wherever  it  seemed  good  to 


PROLOGUE  9 

them,  if  their  masters  sanctioned  their  absence,  with- 
out any  let  or  hindrance  from  the  law. 

The  patronage  of  actors  by  the  Duke  of  Glouces- 
ter led  to  a  love  of  acting  by  gentlemen  amateurs, 
Richard  had  ennobled  the  profession,  the  gentlemen 
of  the  Inns  of  Court  took  it  up,  and  they  soon  had 
kings  and  queens  leading  the  applause  of  approving 
audiences.  To  the  same  example  may  be  traced  the 
custom  of  having  dramatic  performances  in  pufclic 
schools,  the  pupils  being  the  performers.  These 
boys,  or,  in  their  place,  the  children  of  the  Chapel 
Royal,  were  frequently  summoned  to  play  in  presence 
of  the  king  and  court.  Boatsful  of  them  went  down 
the  river  to  Greenwich,  or  up  to  Hampton  Court,  to 
enliven  the  dulness  or  stimulate  the  religious  enthu- 
siasm of  their  royal  auditors  there.  At  the  former 
place,  and  when  there  was  not  yet  any  suspicion  of 
the  orthodoxy  of  Henry  VHI.,  the  boys  of  St.  Paul's 
acted  a  Latin  play  before  the  sovereign  and  the  rep- 
resentatives of  other  sovereigns.  The  object  of  the 
play  was  to  exalt  the  Pope,  and  consequently,  Luther 
and  his  wife  were  the  foolish  villains  of  the  piece,  ex- 
posed to  the  contempt  and  derision  of  the  delighted 
and  right-thinking  hearers. 

In  most  cases  the  playwrights,  even  when  members 
of  the  clergy,  were  actors  as  well  as  authors.  This 
is  the  more  singular,  as  the  players  were  generally  of 
a  roystering  character,  and  were  but  ill-regarded  by 
the  Church.  Nevertheless,  by  their  united  efforts, 
though  they  were  not  always  colleagues,  they  helped 
the  rude  production  of  the  first  regularly  constructed 
English  comedy,  "Ralph  Roister  Bolster,"  in  1540. 
The  author  was  a  **  clerk,"  named  Nicholas  Udall, 


lo  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

whom  Eton  boys,  whose  master  he  was,  hated  be- 
cause of  his  harshness.  The  rough  and  reverend 
gentleman  brought  forth  the  above  piece,  just  one 
year  previous  to  his  losing  the  mastership,  on  suspi- 
cion of  being  concerned  in  a  robbery  of  the  college 
plate. 

Subsequently  to  this,  the  Cambridge  youths  had 
the  courage  to  play  a  tragedy  called  "  Pammachus," 
which  must  have  been  offensive  to  the  government 
of  Henry  VIII.  Gardiner,  Bishop  of  Winchester, 
chancellor  of  the  university,  immediately  wrote  a 
characteristic  letter  to  the  vice-chancellor,  Dr.  Mat- 
thew Parker.  It  is  dated  27th  March,  1545.  "I 
have  been  informed,"  he  says,  "that  the  youth  in 
Christ's  College,  contrary  to  the  mind  of  the  master 
and  president,  hath  of  late  played  a  tragedy  called 
*  Pammachus,'  a  part  of  which  tragedy  is  so  pestifer- 
ous as  were  intolerable.  If  it  be  so,  I  intend  to  travail, 
as  my  duty  is,  for  the  reformation  of  it.  I  know 
mine  office  there,  and  mind  to  do  in  it  as  much  as  I 
may."  Parker  answers,  on  the  3d  of  April,  that  the 
play  had  been  performed  with  the  concurrence  of  the 
college  authorities,  after  means  had  been  taken  to 
strike  out  "slanderous  cavillations  and  suspicious 
sentences,"  and  "all  such  matter  whereby  offence 
might  greatly  have  risen.  Hitherto,"  adds  Parker, 
"  have  I  not  seen  any  man  that  was  present  at  it,  to 
show  himself  grieved;  albeit  it  was  thought  their 
time  and  labour  might  be  spent  in  a  better-handled 
matter."  Gardiner  is  not  satisfied  with  this,  and  he 
will  have  the  subject  investigated.  Accordingly,  some 
of  the  audience  are  ordered  to  be  examined,  to  dis- 
cover if  what  they  applauded  was  what  the  king's 


PROLOGUE  1 1 

government  had  reproved.  "  I  have  heard  special- 
ities," he  writes,  "that  they"  (the  actors)  "reproved 
Lent  fastings,  all  ceremonies,  and  albeit  the  words  of 
sacrament  and  mass  were  not  named,  yet  the  rest 
of  the  matter  written  in  that  tragedy,  in  the  reproof 
of  them  was  expressed."  Gardiner  intimates  that  if 
the  authorities  concurred,  after  exercising  a  certain 
censorship,  in  licensing  the  representation,  they  were 
responsible  for  all  that  was  uttered,  as  it  must  have 
had  the  approval  of  their  judgments. 

A  strict  examination  followed.  Nearly  the  entire 
audience  passed  under  it,  but  not  a  man  could  or 
would  remember  that  he  had  heard  anything  to  which 
he  could  make  objection.  Therewith,  Parker  trans- 
mitted to  Gardiner  the  stage-copy  of  the  tragedy, 
which  the  irate  prelate  thus  reviews  :  "  Perusing  the 
book  of  the  tragedy  which  ye  sent  me,  I  find  much 
matter  not  stricken  out,  all  which  by  the  parties'  own 
confession,  was  uttered  very  naught,  and  on  the  other 
part  something  not  well  omitted."  Flagrant  lies  are 
said  to  be  mixed  up  with  incontrovertible  truths  ; 
and  it  is  suggested,  that  if  any  of  the  audience  had 
declared  that  they  had  heard  nothing  at  which  they 
could  take  offence,  it  must  have  been  because  they 
had  forgotten  much  of  what  they  had  heard.  Ulti- 
mately, Parker  was  left  to  deal  with  the  parties  as  he 
thought  best ;  and  he  wisely  seems  to  have  thought 
it  best  to  do  nothing.  Plays  were  the  favourite  rec- 
reation of  the  university  men ;  albeit,  as  Parker 
writes,  "Two  or  three  in  Trinity  College  think  it 
very  unseeming  that  Christians  should  play  or  be 
present  at  any  profane  comedies  or  tragedies." 

Actors  and  clergy  came  into  direct  collision,  when, 


la  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

at  the  accession  of  Edward  VI.  (i  547),  the  Bishop  of 
Winchester  announced  "a  solemn  dirge  and  mass," 
in  honour  of  the  lately  deceased  king,  Henry  VIII. 
The  indiscreet  Southwark  actors  thereupon  gave 
notice  that,  at  the  time  announced  for  the  religious 
service,  they  would  act  a  "  solempne  play,"  to  try,  as 
the  bishop  remarks  in  a  letter  to  Paget,  "who  shall 
have  most  resort,  they  in  game  or  I  in  earnest."  The 
prelate  urgently  requests  the  interference  of  the 
lord  protector,  but  with  what  effect,  the  records  in 
the  state  paper  office  afford  no  information. 

Some  of  these  Southwark  actors  were  the  "  ser- 
vants "  of  Henry  Grey,  Marquis  of  Dorset,  whose 
mansion  was  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  river.  In 
155 1  he  was  promoted  to  the  dukedom  of  Suffolk, 
but  his  poor  players  were  then  prohibited  from  play- 
ing anywhere,  save  in  their  master's  presence. 

Severity  led  to  fraud.  In  the  autumn  of  the  fol- 
lowing year,  Richard  Ogle  forwarded  to  the  council 
a  forged  license,  taken  from  the  players  —  a  matter 
which  was  pronounced  to  be  "  worthy  of  correction." 
The  young  king's  patronage  of  his  own  "  servants " 
was  not  marked  by  a  princely  liberality ;  the  salary 
of  one  of  his  players  of  interludes,  John  Brown,  was 
five  marks  yearly,  as  wages,  and  one  pound  three 
shillings  and  fourpence,  for  his  livery. 

Of  the  party  dramatists  of  this  reign,  that  reverend 
prelate,  "Bilious  Bale,"  was  the  most  active  and  the 
least  pleasant-tempered.  Bale  had  been  a  Romanist 
priest,  he  was  now  a  Protestant  bishop  (of  Ossory), 
with  a  wife  to  control  the  episcopal  hospitality.  Bale 
"had  seen  the  world."  He  had  gone  through  mar- 
vellous adventures,  of  which  his  adversaries  did  not 


PROLOGUE  13 

believe  a  word ;  and  he  had  converted  the  most 
abstruse  doctrinal  subjects  into  edifying  semi-lively 
comedies.  The  bishop  did  not  value  his  enemies  at 
the  worth  of  a  rush  in  an  old  king's  chamber.  He 
was  altogether  a  Boanerges  ;  and  when  his  "  John, 
King  of  England,"  was  produced,  the  audience,  com- 
prising two  factions  in  the  Church  and  state,  found 
the  policy  of  Rome  toward  this  country  illustrated 
with  such  effect,  that  while  one  party  hotly  de- 
nounced, the  other  applauded  the  coarse  and  vigorous 
audacity  of  the  author. 

So  powerful  were  the  influences  of  the  stage,  when 
thus  applied,  that  the  government  of  Queen  Mary 
made  similar  application  of  them  in  support  of  their 
own  views.  A  play,  styled  "  Respublica,"  exhibited 
to  the  people  the  alleged  iniquity  of  the  Reforma- 
tion, pointed  out  the  dread  excellence  of  the  sover- 
eign herself  (personified  as  Queen  Nemesis),  and  ex- 
emplified her  inestimable  qualities,  by  making  all  the 
virtues  follow  in  her  train  as  maids  of  honour. 

Such,  now,  were  the  orthodox  actors ;  but  the 
heretical  players  were  to  be  provided  against  by 
stringent  measures.  A  decree  of  the  sovereign  and 
council,  in  1556,  prohibited  all  players  and  pipers 
from  strolling  through  the  kingdom;  such  strollers 
— .  the  pipers  singularly  included  —  being,  as  it  was 
said,  disseminators  of  seditions  and  heresies. 

The  eye  of  the  observant  government  also  watched 
the  resident  actors  in  town.  King  Edward  had  or- 
dered the  removal  of  the  king's  revels  and  masques 
from  Warwick  Inn,  Holborn,  "to  the  late  dissolved 
house  of  Blackfriars,  London,"  where  considerable 
outlay  was  made  for  scenery  and  machinery,  —  ad- 


14  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

juncts  to  stage  effect,  —  which  are  erroneously  sup- 
posed to  have  been  first  introduced  a  century  later, 
by  Davenant.  There  still  remained  acting,  a  com- 
pany at  the  Boar's  Head,  without  Aldgate,  on  whom 
the  police  of  Mary  were  ordered  to  make  levy.  The 
actors  had  been  playing  in  that  inn-yard  a  comedy 
entitled  a  "  Sack  Full  of  News."  The  order  of  the 
Privy  Council  to  the  mayor  informs  his  Worship,  that 
it  is  "  a  lewd  play ; "  bids  him  send  his  officers  to  the 
theatre  without  delay,  and  not  only  to  apprehend 
the  comedians,  but  to  "take  their  play-book  from 
them  and  send  it  before  the  Privy  Council." 

The  actors  were  under  arrest  for  four  and  twenty 
hours,  and  were  then  set  free,  but  under  certain  stipu- 
lations to  be  observed  by  them  "  and  all  other  players 
throughout  the  city."  Namely :  they  were  to  exer- 
cise their  vocation  of  acting  "  between  All  Saints  and 
Shrovetide  "  only ;  and  they  were  bound  to  act  no 
other  plays  but  such  as  were  approved  of  by  the 
Ordinary,  This  was  the  most  stringent  censorship 
to  which  the  stage  has  ever  been  subjected. 

Although  Edward  had  commanded  the  transfer  of 
the  company  of  actors  from  Warwick  Inn  to  Black- 
friars,  that  dissolved  monastery  was  not  legally 
converted  into  a  theatre  till  the  year  1576,  when 
Elizabeth  was  on  the  throne.  In  that  year  the  Earl 
of  Leicester's  servants  were  licensed  to  open  their 
series  of  seasons  in  a  house,  the  site  of  which  is 
occupied  by  Apothecaries'  Hall,  and  some  adjacent 
buildings.  At  the  head  of  the  company  was  James, 
father  of  Richard  Burbage,  the  original  representa- 
tive of  Richard  HI.  and  of  Hamlet,  the  author  of 
which  tragedies,  so  named,  was,  at  the  time  of  the 


PROLOGUE  IS 

opening  of  the  Blackfriars  Theatre,  a  lad  of  twelve 
years  of  age,  surmounting  the  elementary  difficulties 
of  Latin  and  Greek,  in  the  Free  School  of  Stratford- 
on-Avon. 

In  Elizabeth  the  drama  possessed  a  generous  pat- 
roness and  a  vindictive  censor.  Her  afternoons  at 
Windsor  Castle  and  Richmond  were  made  pleasant 
to  her  by  the  exertions  of  her  players.  The  cost  to 
her  of  occasional  performances  at  the  above  resi- 
dences during  two  years,  amounted  to  a  fraction  over 
JC444.  There  were  incidental  expenses  also,  proving 
that  the  actors  were  well  cared  for.  In  the  year 
1575,  among  the  estimates  for  plays  at  Hampton 
Court,  the  liberal  sum  of  jCS  14s.  is  set  down  "for 
the  boyling  of  the  brawns  against  Xtmas." 

As  at  court,  so  also  did  the  drama  flourish  at 
the  universities,  especially  at  Cambridge.  There,  in 
1 566,  the  coarse  dialect  comedy,  "  Gammer  Gurton's 
Needle,"  —  a  marvellous  production,  when  considered 
as  the  work  of  a  bishop.  Still,  of  Bath  and  Wells,  — 
was  presented  amid  a  world  of  laughter. 

There,  too,  was  exercised  a  sharp  censorship  over 
both  actors  and  audience.  In  a  letter  from  Vice- 
Chancellor  Hatcher  to  Burleigh,  the  conduct  of 
Punter,  a  student  of  St.  John's,  at  stage-plays  at 
Caius  and  Trinity,  is  complained  of  as  unsteady.  In 
1 58 1  the  heads  of  houses  again  make  application  to 
Burleigh,  objecting  to  the  players  of  the  great 
chamberlain,  the  Earl  of  Oxford,  poet  and  courtier, 
exhibiting  certain  plays  already  "practised  "  by  them 
before  the  king.  The  authorities,  when  scholastic 
audiences  were  noisy,  or  when  players  brought  no 
novelty  with  them  to  Cambridge,  applied  to  the  great 


i6  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

Statesman  in  town,  and  vexed  him  with  dramatic 
troubles,  as  if  he  had  been  general  stage-manager  of 
all  the  companies  strolling  over  the  kingdom. 

On  one  occasion  the  stage  was  employed  as  a 
vantage-ground,  whereon  to  raise  a  battery  against 
the  power  of  the  stage's  great  patroness,  the  queen. 
In  1 599,  the  indiscreet  followers  of  Essex  "  filled  the 
pit  of  the  theatre,  where  Rutland  and  Southampton 
are  daily  seen,  and  where  Shakespeare's  company,  in 
the  great  play  of  'Richard  II.,'  have,  for  more  than 
a  year,  been  feeding  the  public  eye  with  pictures  of 
the  deposition  of  kings."  In  June,  of  the  following 
year,  "those  scenes  of  Shakespeare's  play  disturb 
Elizabeth's  dreams."  The  play  had  had  a  long  and 
splendid  run,  not  less  from  its  glorious  agony  of 
dramatic  passion  than  from  the  open  countenance 
lent  to  it  by  the  earl,  who,  before  his  voyage,  was  a 
constant  auditor  at  the  Globe,  and  by  his  constant 
companions,  Rutland  and  Southampton.  The  great 
parliamentary  scene,  the  deposition  of  Richard,  not 
in  the  printed  book,  was  possibly  not  in  the  early 
play ;  yet  the  representation  of  a  royal  murder  and 
a  successful  usurpation  on  the  public  stage  is  an 
event  to  be  applied  by  the  groundlings,  in  a  perni- 
cious and  disloyal  sense.  Tongues  whisper  to  the 
queen  that  this  play  is  part  of  a  great  plot  to  teach 
her  subjects  how  to  murder  kings.  They  tell  her 
she  is  Richard ;  Essex,  Bolingbroke.  These  warn- 
ings sink  into  her  mind.  When  Lambard,  keeper 
of  the  records,  waits  upon  her  at  the  palace,  she  ex- 
claims to  him,  "  I  am  Richard !  Know  you  not 
that  ? " 

The  performance  of  this  play  was,  nevertheless, 


PROLOGUE  17 

not  prohibited.  When  the  final  attempt  of  Essex 
was  about  to  be  made,  in  February,  1601,  "to  fan 
the  courage  of  their  crew,"  says  Mr.  Hepworth  Dixon, 
from  whose  "  Personal  History  of  Lord  Bacon "  I 
borrow  these  details,  "and  prepare  the  citizens  for 
news  of  a  royal  deposition,  the  chiefs  of  the  insurrec- 
tion think  good  to  revive,  for  a  night,  their  favourite 
play.  They  send  for  Augustine  Phillips,  manager  of 
the  Blackfriars  Theatre,  to  Essex  House.  Monteagle, 
Percy,  and  two  or  three  more  —  among  them  Cuffe 
and  Meyrick  —  gentlemen  whose  names  and  faces  he 
does  not  recognise,  receive  him  ;  and  Lord  Monteagle, 
speaking  for  the  rest,  tells  him  that  they  want  to 
have  played  the  next  day  Shakespeare's  deposition  of 
Richard  H.  Phillips  objects  that  the  play  is  stale, 
that  a  new  one  is  running,  and  that  the  company  will 
lose  money  by  a  change.  Monteagle  meets  his  ob- 
jections. The  theatre  shall  not  lose ;  a  host  of 
gentlemen  from  Essex  House  will  fill  the  galleries; 
if  there  is  fear  of  loss,  here  are  40s.  to  make  it  up. 
Phillips  take  the  money,  and  King  Richard  is  duly 
deposed  for  them,  and  put  to  death." 

Meanwhile,  the  profession  of  player  had  been  as- 
sailed by  fierce  opponents.  In  1587,  when  twenty- 
three  summers  lightly  sat  on  Shakespeare's  brow, 
Gosson,  the  "  parson "  of  St.  Botolph's,  discharged 
the  first  shot  against  stage-plays  which  had  yet  been 
fired  by  any  one  not  in  absolute  authority.  Gosson's 
book  was  entitled,  "  A  School  of  Abuse,"  and  it  pro- 
fessed to  contain  "  a  pleasant  invective  against  poets, 
players,  jesters,  and  such  like  caterpillars  of  a  com- 
monwealth." Gosson's  pleasantry  consists  in  his 
illogical  employment  of  invective.    Domitian  favoured 


l8  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

plays,  argal,  Domitian's  domestic  felicity  was  troubled 
by  a  player,  —  Paris.  Of  Caligula,  Gosson  remarks, 
that  he  made  so  much  of  players  and  dancers,  that 
"  he  suffered  them  openly  to  kiss  his  lips,  when  the 
senators  might  scarcely  have  a  lick  at  his  feet ; "  and 
the  good  man  of  St.  Botolph's  adds,  that  the  murder 
of  Domitian,  by  Charea,  was  "  a  fit  catastrophe,"  for  it 
was  done  as  the  emperor  was  returning  from  a  play ! 
As  a  painter  of  manners,  Gosson  thus  gaily  limns 
the  audiences  of  his  time.  "  In  our  assemblies  at 
plays  in  London,  you  shall  see  such  heaving  and 
shouting,  such  pitching  and  shouldering  to  sit  by 
women,  such  care  for  their  garments  that  they  be 
not  trodden  on,  such  eyes  to  their  laps  that  no  chips 
light  on  them,  such  pillows  to  their  backs  that  they 
take  no  hurt,  such  maskings  in  their  ears,  I  know  not 
what ;  such  giving  them  pippins  to  pass  the  time ; 
such  playing  at  foot-saunt  without  cards ;  such  tick- 
ing, such  toying,  such  smiling,  such  winking,  and  such 
manning  them  home  when  the  sports  are  ended,  that 
it  is  a  right  comedy  to  mark  their  behaviour."  In 
this  picture  Gosson  paints  a  good-humoured  and  a 
gallant  people.  When  he  turns  from  failings  to 
vices,  the  old  rector  of  St.  Botolph's  dwells  upon 
them  as  Tartuffe  does  upon  the  undraped  shoulders 
of  Dorinne.  He  likes  the  subject,  and  makes  attract- 
ive what  he  denounces  as  pernicious.  The  play- 
wrights he  assails  with  the  virulence  of  an  author 
who,  having  been  unsuccessful  himself,  has  no  glad- 
ness in  the  success,  nor  any  generosity  for  the  short- 
comings, of  others.  Yet  he  cannot  deny  that  some 
plays  are  moral,  such  as  "  Catiline's  Conspiracy,"  — 
"  because,"  as  he  elegantly  observes,  "  it  is  said  to  be 


PROLOGUE  19 

a  pig  of  mine  own  sow."  This,  and  one  or  two  other 
plays  written  by  him,  he  complaisantly  designates  as 
"good  plays,  and  sweet  plays,  and  of  all  plays  the 
best  plays,  and  most  to  be  liked." 

Let  us  now  return  to  the  year  of  Shakespeare's 
birth.  The  great  poet  came  into  the  world  when  the 
English  portion  of  it  was  deafened  with  the  thunder 
of  Archbishop  Grindal,  who  flung  his  bolts  against 
the  profession  which  the  child  in  his  cradle  at  Strat- 
ford was  about  to  ennoble  for  ever.  England  had 
been  devastated  by  the  plague  of  1563.  Grindal 
illogically  traced  the  rise  of  the  pestilence  to  the 
theatres ;  and  to  check  the  evil,  he  counselled  Cecil 
to  suppress  the  vocation  of  the  idle,  infamous,  youth- 
infecting  players,  as  the  prelate  called  them,  for  one 
whole  year, — and  "if  it  were  for  ever,"  adds  the 
primate,  "  it  were  not  amiss." 

Elizabeth's  face  shone  upon  the  actors,  and  re- 
hearsals went  actively  on  before  the  master  of  the 
revels.  The  numbers  of  the  players,  however,  so 
increased  and  spread  over  the  kingdom,  that  the  gov- 
ernment, when  Shakespeare  was  eight  years  of  age, 
enacted  that  startling  statute  which  is  supposed  to 
have  branded  dramatic  art  and  artists  with  infamy. 
But  the  celebrated  statute  of  1572  does  not  declare 
players  to  be  "rogues  and  vagabonds."  It  simply 
threatens  to  treat  as  such,  all  acting  companies  who 
presume  to  set  up  their  stage  without  the  license  of 
"  two  justices  of  the  peace  at  least,"  This  was  rather 
to  protect  the  art  than  to  insult  the  artists;  and  a 
few  years  subsequent  to  the  publication  of  this  statute, 
Elizabeth  granted  the  first  royal  patent  conceded  in 
England  to  actors,  —  that  of  1 576.    By  this  authority. 


iO  THEIR  MAJESTIES*  SERVANTS 

Lord  Leicester's  servants  were  empowered  to  pro- 
duce such  plays  as  seemed  good  to  them,  "as  well," 
says  the  queen,  "  for  the  recreation  of  our  loving  sub- 
jects as  for  our  solace  and  pleasure,  when  we  shall 
think  good  to  see  them."  Sovereign  could  scarcely 
pay  a  more  graceful  compliment  to  poet  or  to  actor. 

This  royal  patent  sanctioned  the  acting  of  plays 
within  the  liberties  of  the  city ;  but  against  this  the 
city  magistrates  commenced  an  active  agitation.  Their 
brethren  of  Middlesex  followed  a  like  course  through- 
out the  county.  The  players  were  treated  as  the 
devil's  missionaries ;  and  such  unsavoury  terms  were 
flung  at  them  and  at  playwrights,  by  the  city  alder- 
men and  the  county  justices,  that  thereon  was  founded 
that  animosity  which  led  dramatic  authors  to  repre- 
sent citizens  and  justices  as  the  most  egregious  of  fools, 
the  most  arrant  of  knaves,  and  the  most  deluded  of 
husbands. 

Driven  from  the  city,  Burbage  and  his  gay  brother- 
hood were  safe  in  the  shelter  of  Blackfriars,  adjacent 
to  the  city  walls.  Safe,  but  neither  welcome  nor  un- 
molested. The  devout  and  noble  ladies  who  had 
long  resided  near  the  once  sacred  building  clamoured 
at  the  audacity  of  the  actors.  Divine  worship  and 
sermon,  so  they  averred,  would  be  grievously  dis- 
turbed by  the  music  and  rant  of  the  comedians,  and 
by  the  debauched  companions  resorting  to  witness 
those  abominable  plays  and  interludes. 

This  cry  was  shrill  and  incessant,  but  it  was  un- 
successful. The  Blackfriars  was  patronised  by  a 
public  whose  favours  were  also  solicited  by  those 
"  sumptuous  houses,"  the  "  Theatre  "  and  the  "  Cur- 
tain," in  Shoreditch.     Pulpit  logicians  reasoned,  more 


PROLOGUE  «i 

heedless  of  connection  between  premises  and  conclu- 
sion than  Grindal  or  Gosson.  "  The  cause  of  plagues 
is  sin,"  argues  one,  "and  the  cause  of  sin  are  plays; 
therefore,  the  cause  of  plagues  are  plays."  Again : 
"  If  these  be  not  suppressed,"  exclaims  a  Paul's  Cross 
preacher,  "it  will  make  such  a  tragedy  that  all  Lon- 
don may  well  mourn  while  it  is  London."  But  for 
the  sympathy  of  the  Earl  of  Leicester,  it  would  have 
gone  ill  with  these  players.  He  has  been  as  ill-re- 
quited by  authors  and  actors  as  their  earlier  friend, 
Richard  of  Gloucester.  To  this  day,  the  stage  ex- 
hibits the  great  earl,  according  to  the  legend  con- 
trived by  his  foes,  as  the  murderer  of  his  wife. 

Sanctioned  by  the  court,  befriended  by  the  noble, 
and  followed  by  the  general  public,  the  players  stood 
their  ground;  but  they  lacked  the  discretion  which 
should  have  distinguished  them.  They  bearded 
authority,  played  in  despite  of  legal  prohibitions,  and 
introduced  forbidden  subjects  of  state  and  religion 
upon  their  stage.  Thence  ensued  suspensions  for 
indefinite  periods,  severe  supervision  when  the  sus- 
pension was  rescinded,  and  renewed  transgression  on 
the  part  of  the  reckless  companies,  even  to  the  play- 
ing on  a  Sunday,  in  any  locality  where  they  con- 
jectured there  was  small  likelihood  of  their  being 
followed  by  a  warrant. 

But  the  most  costly  of  the  theatrical  revels  of 
King  James  took  place  at  Whitehall,  at  Greenwich, 
or  at  Hampton  Court,  on  Sunday  evenings  —  an 
unseemly  practice,  which  embittered  the  hatred  of 
the  Puritans  against  the  stage,  all  belonging  to  it,  and 
all  who  patronised  it.  James  was  wiser  when  he 
licensed  Kirkham,  Hawkins,  Kendall,  and  Payne,  to 


2  2  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

train  the  queen's  children  of  the  revels,  and  to  exer- 
cise them  in  playing  within  the  Blackfriars  or  else- 
where, all  plays  which  had  the  sanction  of  old  Samuel 
Danyell.  His  queen,  Anne,  was  both  actress  and 
manager  in  the  masques  peformed  at  court,  the  ex- 
penses of  which  often  exceeded,  indeed  were  ordered 
not  to  be  limited  to  ;^i,ooo.  "Excellent  comedies" 
were  played  before  Prince  Henry  and  the  Prince  Pal- 
grave,  at  Cambridge ;  and  the  members  of  St.  John's, 
Clare,  and  Trinity,  acted  before  the  king  and  court, 
in  1615,  when  the  illustrious  guests  were  scattered 
among  the  colleges,  and  twenty-six  tuns  of  wine  con- 
sumed within  five  days ! 

The  lawyers  alone  were  offended  at  the  visits  of 
the  court  to  the  amateurs  at  Cambridge,  especially 
when  James  went  thither  to  see  the  comedy  of  "  Igno- 
ramus," in  which  law  and  lawyers  are  treated  with 
small  measure  of  respect.  When  James  was  pre- 
vented from  going  to  Cambridge,  he  was  accustomed 
to  send  for  the  whole  scholastic  company  to  appear 
before  him,  in  one  of  the  choicest  of  their  pieces,  at 
Royston.  Roving  troops  were  licensed  by  this  play- 
loving  king  to  follow  their  vocation  in  stated  places 
in  the  country,  under  certain  restrictions  for  their 
tarrying  and  wending  —  a  fortnight's  residence  in  one 
town  being  the  time  limited,  with  injunction  not  to 
play  "during  church  hours." 

Then  there  were  unlicensed  satirical  plays  in  un- 
licensed houses.  Sir  John  Yorke,  his  wife  and 
brothers,  were  fined  and  imprisoned,  because  of  a 
scandalous  play  acted  in  Sir  John's  house,  in  favour 
of  popery.  On  another  occasion,  in  16 17,  we  hear  of 
a  play,  in  some  country  mansion,  in  which  the  king, 


PROLOGUE  23 

represented  as  a  huntsman,  observed  that  he  had 
rather  hear  a  dog  bark  than  a  cannon  roar.  Two 
kinsmen,  named  Napleton,  discussed  this  matter, 
whereupon  one  of  them  remarked  that  it  was  a  pity 
the  king,  so  well  represented,  ever  came  to  the  crown 
of  England  at  all,  for  he  loved  his  dogs  better  than 
his  subjects.  Whereupon  the  listener  to  this  remark 
went  and  laid  information  before  the  council  against 
the  kinsman  who  had  uttered  it ! 

The  players  could,  in  James's  reign,  boast  that 
their  profession  was  at  least  kindly  looked  upon  by 
the  foremost  man  in  the  English  Church.  "  No 
man,"  says  Racket,  *'  was  more  wise  or  more  serious 
than  Archbishop  Bancroft,  the  Atlas  of  our  clergy,  in 
his  time  ;  and  he  that  writes  this  hath  seen  an  inter- 
lude well  presented  before  him,  at  Lambeth,  by  his 
own  gentlemen,  when  I  was  one  of  the  youngest 
spectators."  The  actors  thus  had  the  sanction  of  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  in  James's  reign,  as  they 
had  that  of  Williams,  Archbishop  of  York,  in  the 
next.  Racket  often  alludes  to  theatrical  matters. 
"  The  theatres,"  he  says,  in  one  of  his  discourses 
made  during  the  reign  of  Charles  R.,  when  the 
preacher  was  Bishop  of  Litchfield  and  Coventry, 
"are  not  large  enough  nowadays  to  receive  our 
loose  gallants,  male  and  female,  but  whole  fields  and 
parks  are  thronged  with  their  concourse,  where  they 
make  a  muster  of  their  gay  clothes."  Meanwhile,  in 
1 61 6,  the  pulpit  once  more  issued  anathemas  against 
the  stage.  The  denouncer,  on  this  occasion,  was  the 
preacher  of  St.  Mary  Overy's,  named  Sutton,  whose 
undiscriminating  censure  was  boldly,  if  not  logically, 
answered  by  the  actor,  Field.     There  is  a  letter  from 


24  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

the  latter  in  the  State  Paper  Office,  in  which  he 
remonstrates  against  the  sweeping  condemnation  of 
all  players.  The  comedian  admits  that  what  he  calls 
his  trade  has  its  corruptions,  like  other  trades ;  but 
he  adds,  that  since  it  is  patronised  by  the  king,  there 
is  disloyalty  in  preaching  against  it,  and  he  hints  that 
the  theology  of  the  preacher  must  be  a  little  out  of 
gear,  seeing  that  he  openly  denounces  a  vocation 
which  is  not  condemned  in  Scripture ! 

Field,  the  champion  of  his  craft  in  the  early  part  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  was  one  of  the  dozen  actors 
to  whom  King  James,  in  1619,  granted  a  license  to 
act  comedy,  tragedy,  history,  etc.,  for  the  solace  and 
pleasure  of  his  Majesty  and  his  subjects,  at  the  Globe, 
and  at  their  private  house  in  the  precincts  of  Black- 
friars.  This  license  was  made  out  to  Hemings,  Bur- 
bage,  Condell,  Lowen,  Tooley,  Underwood,  Field, 
Benfield,  Gough,  Eccleston,  Robinson,  Shancks,  and 
their  associates.  Their  success  rendered  them  auda- 
cious, and,  in  1624,  they  got  into  trouble,  on  a  com- 
plaint of  the  Spanish  ambassador.  The  actors  at  the 
Globe  had  produced  Middleton's  "Game  at  Chess," 
in  which  the  action  is  carried  on  by  black  and  white 
pieces,  representing  the  Reformed  and  Romanist 
parties.  The  latter,  being  the  rogues  of  the  piece, 
are  foiled,  and  are  "put  in  the  bag."  The  Spanish 
envoy's  complaint  was  founded  on  the  fact  that  living 
persons  were  represented  by  the  actors,  such  persons 
being  the  King  of  Spain,  Gondomar,  and  the  famous 
Antonio  de  Dominis,  who,  after  being  a  Romish 
bishop  (of  Spalatro),  professed  Protestantism,  became 
Dean  of  Windsor,  and  after  all  died  in  his  earlier 
faith,   at   Rome.     On   the  ambassador's   complaint. 


PROLOGUE  25 

the  actors  and  the  author  were  summoned  before  the 
council,  but  no  immediate  result  followed,  for,  two 
days  later,  Nethercole  writes  to  Carleton,  informing 
him  that  "the  comedy  in  which  the  whole  Spanish 
business  is  taken  up,  is  drawing  £100  nightly."  At 
that  time,  a  house  with  jC20  in  it  was  accounted  a 
"good  house,"  at  either  the  Globe  or  Blackfriars. 
Receipts  amounting  to  five  times  that  sum,  for  nine 
afternoons  successively,  may  be  accepted  as  a  proof 
of  the  popularity  of  this  play.  The  Spaniard,  how- 
ever, would  not  let  the  matter  rest ;  the  play  was 
suppressed,  the  actors  forbidden  to  represent  living 
personages  on  the  stage,  and  the  author  was  sent  to 
prison.  Middleton  was  not  long  detained  in  durance 
vile.  James  set  him  free,  instigated  by  a  quip  in  a 
poor  epigram  : 

«'  Rise  but  your  royal  hand,  'twill  set  me  free ! 
'Tis  but  the  '  moving  of  a  man '  —  that's  me." 

A  worse  joke  never  secured  for  its  author  9,  greater 
boon  —  that  of  liberty. 

With  all  this,  an  incident  of  the  following  year 
proves  that  the  players  disregarded  peril,  and  found 
profit  in  excitement.  For  Shrovetide,  1625,  they  an- 
nounced a  play  founded  on  the  Dutch  horrors  at 
Amboyna,  but  the  performance  was  stopped,  on  the 
application  of  the  East  India  Company,  "  for  fear  of 
disturbances  this  Shrovetide."  A  watch  of  eight 
hundred  men  was  set  to  keep  all  quiet  on  Shrove 
Tuesday ;  and  the  subject  was  not  again  selected  for 
a  piece  till  1673,  when  Dryden's  "Amboyna"  was 
produced  in  Drury  Lane,  and  the  cruelties  of  the 
Dutch  condemned  in  a  serio-comic  fashion,  as  those 


26  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

of  a  people  —  so  the  epilogue  intimated  to  the  public 
—  "  who  have  no  more  religion,  faith  —  than  you." 

In  James's  days,  the  greater  or  less  prevalence  of 
the  plague  regulated  the  licenses  for  playing.  Thus, 
permission  was  given  to  the  queen's  servants  to  act 
"  in  their  several  houses,  the  Curtain,  and  the  Boar's 
Head,  Middlesex,  as  soon  as  the  plague  decreases  to 
thirty  a  week,  in  London."  So,  in  the  very  first  year 
of  Charles  I.,  1625,  the  "common  players"  have 
leave  not  only  to  act  where  they  will,  but  "to  come 
to  court,  now  the  plague  is  reduced  to  six."  Accord- 
ingly, there  was  a  merry  Christmas  season  at  Hamp- 
ton Court,  the  actors  being  there  ;  and,  writes  Rudyard 
to  Nethercole,  "  the  demoiselles "  (maids  of  honour, 
doubtless)  "mean  to  present  a  French  pastoral, 
wherein  the  queen  is  a  principal  actress."  Thus, 
the  example  set  by  the  late  Queen  Anne,  and  now 
adopted  by  Henrietta  Maria,  led  to  the  introduction 
of  actresses  on  the  public  stage,  and  it  was  the  mani- 
festation of  a  taste  for  acting  exhibited  by  the  French 
princess,  that  led  to  the  appearance  in  London  of 
actresses  of  that  nation. 

With  the  reign  of  Charles  L  new  hopes  came  to 
the  poor  player,  but  therewith  came  new  adversaries. 
Charles  I.  was  a  hearty  promoter  of  all  sports  and 
pleasures,  provided  his  people  would  be  merry  and 
wise  according  to  his  prescription  only.  Wakes 
and  May-poles  were  authorised  by  him,  to  the  infinite 
disgust  of  the  Puritans,  who  liked  the  authorisation 
no  more  than  they  did  the  suppression  of  lectures. 
When  Charles  repaired  to  church,  where  the  "  Book 
of  Sports  "  was  read,  he  was  exposed  to  the  chance  of 
hearing  the  minister,  after  reading  the  decree  as  he 


PROLOGUE  27 

was  ordered,  calmly  go  through  the  Ten  Command- 
ments, and  then  tell  his  hearers,  that  having  listened 
to  the  commands  of  God  and  those  of  man,  they 
might  now  follow  which  they  liked  best. 

When  Bishop  Williams,  of  Lincoln,  and  subse- 
quently Archbishop  of  York,  held  a  living,  he 
pleaded  in  behalf  of  the  right  of  his  Northampton- 
shire parishioners  to  dance  round  the  May-pole. 
When  ordered  to  deliver  up  the  Great  Seal  by  the 
king,  he  retired  to  his  episcopal  palace  at  Buckden, 
where,  says  Hacket,  "he  was  the  worse  thought  of 
by  some  strict  censurers,  because  he  admitted  in  his 
public  hall  a  comedy  once  or  twice  to  be  presented 
before  him,  exhibited  by  his  own  servants,  for  an 
evening  recreation."  Being  then  in  disgrace,  this 
simple  matter  was  exaggerated  by  his  enemies  into  a 
report  that,  on  an  ordination  Sunday,  this  arrogant 
Welshman  had  entertained  his  newly-ordained  clergy 
with  a  representation  of  Shakespeare's  "  Midsummer 
Night's  Dream,"  the  actors  in  which  had  been  ex- 
pressly brought  down  from  London  for  the  purpose ! 

In  the  troubled  days  in  which  King  Charles  and 
Bishop  Williams  lived,  the  stage  suffered  with  the 
throne  and  Church.  After  this  time  the  names  of 
the  old  houses  cease  to  be  familiar.  Let  us  take  a 
parting  glance  of  these  primitive  temples  of  our 
drama. 

The  royal  theatre,  Blackfriars,  was  the  most  nobly 
patronised  of  all  the  houses  opened  previous  to  the 
Restoration.  The  grown-up  actors  were  the  most 
skilled  of  their  craft ;  and  the  boys,  or  apprentices, 
were  the  most  fair  and  effeminate  that  could  be  pro- 
cured, and  could  profit  by  instruction.    On  this  stage 


28  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

Shakespeare  enacted  the  ghost  in  *'  Hamlet,"  old 
Adam,  and  a  similar  line  of  characters,  usually  en- 
trusted to  the  ablest  of  the  performers  of  the  second 
class.  Blackfriars  was  a  winter  house.  Some  idea  of 
its  capability  and  pretension  may  be  formed  from  the 
fact,  that  in  1633,  its  proprietors,  the  brothers  Bur- 
bage,  let  it  to  the  actors  for  a  yearly  rent  of  ^^50. 
In  1655  it  was  pulled  down,  after  a  successful  career 
of  about  three-quarters  of  a  century. 

Upon  the  strip  of  shore,  between  Fleet  Street  and 
the  Thames,  there  have  been  erected  three  theatres. 
In  the  year  1 580,  the  old  monastery  of  Whitefriars  was 
given  up  to  a  company  of  players  ;  but  the  Whitefriars 
Theatre  did  not  enjoy  a  very  lengthened  career.  In 
the  year  1 6 1 6,  that  in  which  Shakespeare  died,  it  had 
already  fallen  into  disrepute  and  decay,  and  was  never 
afterward  used  for  the  representation  of  dramatic 
pieces.  The  other  theatres,  in  Dorset  Gardens,  were 
built  subsequently  to  the  Restoration. 

In  the  parish  of  St.  Giles's,  Cripplegate,  and  in  the 
street  now  called  Playhouse  Yard,  connecting  White- 
cross  Street  with  Golding  Lane,  stood  the  old  For- 
tune, erected  in  1600,  for  Henslowe  (the  pawnbroker 
and  money-lender  to  actors)  and  Alleyn,  the  most 
unselfish  of  comedians.  It  was  a  wooden  tenement, 
which  was  burned  down  in  1621,  and  replaced  by 
a  circular  brick  edifice.  In  1649,  two  years  after  the 
suppression  of  plays  by  the  Puritan  Act,  when  the 
house  was  closed,  a  party  of  soldiers,  "  the  sectaries 
of  those  yeasty  times,"  broke  into  the  edifice,  des- 
troyed its  interior  fittings,  and  pulled  down  the 
building.  The  site  and  adjacent  ground  were  soon 
covered  by  dwelling-houses. 


PROLOGUE  29 

Meanwhile,  the  inn  yards,  or  great  rooms  at  the 
inns,  were  not  yet  quite  superseded.  The  Cross 
Keys  in  Grace-church  Street,  the  Bull  in  Bishopsgate 
Street,  near  which  lived  Anthony  Bacon,  to  the  ex- 
treme dislike  of  his  grandmother ;  and  the  Red  Bull, 
in  St.  John  Street,  Clerkenwell,  which  last  existed  as 
late  as  the  period  of  the  Great  Fire,  were  open,  if  not 
for  the  acting  of  plays,  at  least  for  exhibitions  of 
fencing  and  wrestling. 

The  Surrey  side  of  the  Thames  was  a  favourite 
locality  for  plays,  long  before  the  most  famous  of  the 
regular  and  royally  sanctioned  theatres.  The  Globe 
was  on  that  old,  joyous  Bankside ;  and  the  Little 
Rose,  in  1584,  there  succeeded  to  an  elder  structure 
of  the  same  name,  whose  memory  is  still  preserved 
in  Rose  Alley.  The  Globe,  the  summer-house  of 
Shakespeare  and  his  fellows,  flourished  from  1594 
to  161 3,  when  it  fell  a  prey  to  the  flames  caused  by 
the  wadding  of  a  gun,  which  lodged  in  and  set  fire  to 
the  thatched  roof.  The  new  house,  erected  by  a 
royal  and  noble  subscription,  was  of  wood,  but  it  was 
tiled.  Its  career,  however,  was  not  very  extended, 
for  in  1654,  the  owner  of  the  freehold.  Sir  Matthew 
Brand,  pulled  the  house  down  ;  and  the  name  of 
Globe  Alley  is  all  that  is  left  to  point  out  the  where- 
about of  the  popular  summer-house  in  Southwark. 

On  the  same  bank  of  the  great  river  stood  the 
Hope,  a  playhouse  four  times  a  week,  and  a  garden 
for  bear-baiting  on  the  alternate  days.  In  the  former 
was  first  played  Jonson's  "  Bartholomew  Fair."  When 
plays  were  suppressed,  the  zealous  and  orthodox  sol- 
diery broke  into  the  Hope,  horsewhipped  the  actors, 
and  shot  the  bears.     This  place,  however,  in  its  char- 


30  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

acter  of  Bear  Garden,  rallied  after  the  Restoration, 
and  continued  prosperous  till  nearly  the  close  of  the 
seventeenth  century.  There  remains  to  be  noticed, 
Paris  Garden,  famous  for  its  cruel  but  well-patronised 
sports.  Its  popular  circus  was  converted  by  Hens- 
lowe  and  Alleyn  into  a  theatre.  Here,  the  richest 
receipts  were  made  on  the  Sunday,  till  the  law  inter- 
fered and  put  down  these  performances,  the  dear 
delight  of  the  Southwarkians  and  their  visitors  from 
the  opposite  shore,  of  the  olden  time. 

The  supposed  assertion  of  Taylor,  the  Water  Poet, 
has  often  been  quoted,  namely,  that  between  Wind- 
sor bridge  and  Gravesend  there  were  not  less  than 
forty  thousand  watermen,  and  that  more  than  half  of 
these  found  employment  in  transporting  the  holiday 
folks  from  the  Middlesex  to  the  Southwark  shore  of 
the  river,  where  the  players  were  strutting  their  little 
hour  at  the  Globe,  the  Rose,  and  the  Swan,  and 
Bruin  was  being  baited  in  the  adjacent  gardens.  A 
misprint  has  decupled  what  was  about  the  true  num- 
ber, and  even  of  these  many  were  so  unskilful  that 
an  act  was  passed  in  the  very  first  year  of  King 
James,  for  the  protection  of  persons  afloat,  whether 
on  pleasure  or  serious  business. 

In  Holywell  Lane,  near  High  Street,  Shoreditch, 
is  the  site  of  an  old  wooden  structure,  which  bore 
the  distinctive  name  of  "  The  Theatre,"  and  was  ac- 
counted a  sumptuous  house,  probably  because  of  the 
partial  introduction  of  scenery  there.  In  the  early 
part  of  Shakespeare's  career,  as  author  and  actor,  it 
was  closed,  in  consequence  of  proprietary  disputes; 
and  with  the  materials  the  Globe,  at  Bankside,  was 
rebuilt  or  considerably  enlarged.   There  was  a  second 


PROLOGUE  31 

theatre  in  this  district  called  "  The  Curtain,"  a  name 
still  retained  in  Curtain  Road.  This  house  remained 
open  and  successful,  till  the  accession  of  Charles  I., 
subsequent  to  which  time  stage  plays  gave  way  to 
exhibitions  of  athletic  exercises. 

This  district  was  especially  dramatic ;  the  popular 
taste  was  not  only  there  directed  toward  the  stage, 
but  it  was  a  district  wherein  many  actors  dwelt,  and 
consequently  died.  The  baptismal  register  of  St. 
Leonard's  contains  Christian  names  which  appear  to 
have  been  chosen  with  reference  to  the  heroines  of 
Shakespeare ;  and  the  record  of  burials  bears  the 
name  of  many  an  old  actor  of  mark  whose  remains 
now  lie  within  the  churchyard. 

Not  a  vestige,  of  course,  exists  of  any  of  these 
theatres ;  and  yet  of  a  much  older  house,  traces  may 
be  seen  by  those  who  will  seek  them  in  remote  Corn- 
wall. 

This  relic  of  antiquity  is  called  Piran  Round.  It 
consists  of  a  circular  embankment,  about  ten  feet 
high,  sloping  backwards,  and  cut  into  steps  for  seats, 
or  standing-places.  This  embankment  encloses  a. 
level  area  of  grassy  ground,  and  stands  in  the  middle 
of  a  flat,  wild  heath.  A  couple  of  thousand  specta- 
tors could  look  down  from  the  seats  upon  the  grassy 
circus  which  formed  a  stage  of  more  than  a  hundred 
feet  in  diameter.  Here,  in  very  early  times,  sports 
were  played  and  combats  fought  out,  and  rustic  coun- 
cils assembled.  The  ancient  Cornish  Mysteries  here 
drew  tears  and  laughter  from  the  mixed  audiences  of 
the  day.  They  were  popular  as  late  as  the  period 
of  Shakespeare.  Of  one  of  them,  a  five-act  piece, 
entitled,  "The  Creation  of  the  World,  with  Noah's 


$2  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

Flood,"  the  learned  Davies  Gilbert  has  given  a  trans- 
lation. In  this  historical  piece,  played  for  edification 
in  Scripture  history,  the  stage  directions  speak  of 
varied  costumes,  variety  of  scenery,  and  complicated 
machinery,  all  on  an  open-air  stage,  whereon  the  del- 
uge was  to  roll  its  billows,  and  the  mimic  world  be 
lost.  This  cataclysm  achieved,  the  depressed  spec- 
tators were  rendered  merry.  The  minstrels  piped, 
the  audience  rose  and  footed  it,  and  then,  having  had 
their  full  of  amusement,  they  who  had  converged, 
from  so  many  starting-points,  upon  Piran  Round, 
scattered  again  on  their  several  ways  homeward  from 
the  ancient  theatre,  and,  as  the  sun  went  down, 
thinned  away  over  the  heath,  the  fishermen  going 
seaward,  the  miners  inland,  and  the  agricultural  la- 
bourers to  the  cottages  and  farmhouses  which  dotted, 
here  and  there,  the  otherwise  dreary  moor. 

Such  is  Piran  Round  described  to  have  been,  and 
the  "  old  house  "  is  worthy  of  tender  preservation,  for 
it  once  saved  England  from  invasion !  About  the 
year  1600,  "some  strollers,"  as  they  are  called  in 
Somer's  Tracts,  were  playing  late  at  night  at  Piran. 
At  the  same  time  a  party  of  Spaniards  had  landed 
with  the  intention  of  surprising,  plundering,  and  burn- 
ing the  village.  As  the  enemy  were  silently  on  their 
way  to  this  consummation,  the  players,  who  were 
representing  a  battle,  "  struck  up  a  loud  alarum  with 
drum  and  trumpet  on  the  stage,  which  the  enemy 
hearing,  thought  they  were  discovered,  made  some 
few  idle  shots,  and  so  in  a  hurly-burly  fled  to  their 
boats.  And  thus  the  townsmen  were  apprised  of 
their  danger,  and  delivered  from  it  at  the  same 
time." 


PROLOGUE  33 

Thus  the  players  rescued  the  kingdom !  Their 
sons  and  successors  were  not  so  happy  in  rescuing 
their  king ;  but  the  powerful  enemies  of  each  sup- 
pressed both  real  and  mimic  kings.  How  they  dealt 
with  the  monarchs  of  the  stage,  our  prologue  at  an 
end,  remains  to  be  told. 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE  DECLINE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  PLAYERS 

It  was  in  the  eventful  year  of  1587,  while  Roman 
Catholics  were  deploring  the  death  of  Mary  Stuart ; 
while  Englishmen  were  exulting  at  the  destruction 
dealt  by  Drake  to  a  hundred  Spanish  ships  in  the 
port  of  Cadiz ;  while  the  Puritan  party  was  at  angry 
issue  with  Elizabeth ;  while  John  Fox  was  lying 
dead,  and  while  Walsinghara  was  actively  impeding 
the  ways  and  means  of  Armada  Philip,  by  getting  his 
bills  protested  at  Genoa,  —  that  the  little  man,  Gos- 
son,  in  the  parish  of  St.  Botolph,  of  which  he  was 
the  incumbent,  first  nibbed  his  pen,  and  made  it  fly 
furiously  over  paper,  in  wordy  war  against  the  stage 
and  stage-players. 

When  the  Britons  ate  acorns  and  drank  water,  he 
says,  they  were  giants  and  heroes ;  but  since  plays 
came  in  they  had  dwindled  into  a  puny  race,  incapa- 
ble of  noble  and  patriotic  achievements !  And  yet 
next  year,  some  pretty  fellows  of  that  race  were 
sweeping  the  invincible  Armada  from  the  surface  of 
our  seas ! 

When  London  was  talking  admiringly  of  the  coro- 
nation of  Charles  I.,  and  Parliament  was  barely 
according  him  one  pound  in  twelve  of  the  money- 
aids  of  which  he  was  in  need,  there  was  another 

34 


THE  DECLINE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  PLAYERS        3$ 

pamphleteer  sending  up  his  testimony  from  Cheap- 
side  to  Westminster,  against  the  alleged  abomination 
of  plays  and  players.  This  writer  entitles  his  work 
"A  Short  Treatise  against  Stage  Plays,"  and  he 
makes  it  as  sharp  as  it  is  short.  Plays  were  invented 
by  heathens;  they  must  necessarily  be  prejudicial  to 
Christians  !  that  is  the  style  of  his  assertion  and  argu- 
ment. They  were  invented  to  appease  false  gods ; 
consequently,  the  playing  of  them  must  excite  to 
wrath  a  true  Deity !  They  are  no  recreation,  be- 
cause people  come  away  from  them  wearied.  The 
argument,  in  tragedy,  he  informs  us,  is  murder ;  in 
comedy,  it  is  social  vice.  This  he  designates  as 
bad  instruction ;  and  remembering  Field's  query  to 
Sutton,  he  would  very  much  like  to  know  in  what 
page  of  Holy  Writ  authority  is  given  for  the  vocation 
of  an  actor.  He  might  as  well  have  asked  for  the 
suppression  of  tailors,  on  the  ground  of  their  never 
being  once  named  in  either  the  Old  Testament  or 
the  New ! 

But  this  author  finds  condemnation  there  of  "  stage 
effects"  rehearsed  or  unrehearsed.  You  deal  with 
the  judgments  of  God  in  tragedy  and  laugh  over  the 
sins  of  men  in  comedy ;  and  thereupon  he  reminds 
you,  and  not  very  appositely,  that  Ham  was  accursed 
for  deriding  his  father !  Players  change  their  apparel 
and  put  on  women's  attire,  —  as  if  they  had  never 
read  a  chapter  in  Deuteronomy  in  their  lives!  If 
coming  on  the  stage  under  false  representation  of 
their  natural  names  and  persons  be  not  an  offence 
against  the  Epistle  to  Timothy,  he  would  thank  you 
to  inform  him  what  it  is !  As  to  looking  on  these 
pleasant  evils  and  not  falling  into  sin,  —  you  have 


36  THEIR  MAJESTIES'   SERVANTS 

heard  of  Job  and  King  David,  and  you  are  worse  than 
a  heathen  if  you  do  not  remember  what  they  looked 
upon  with  innocent  intent,  or  if  you  have  forgotten 
what  came  of  the  looking. 

He  reminds  parents  that,  while  they  are  at  the 
play,  there  are  wooers  who  are  carrying  off  the  hearts 
of  their  daughters  at  home ;  perhaps  the  very  daugh- 
ters themselves  from  home.  This  seems  to  me  to  be 
less  an  argument  against  resorting  to  the  theatre  than 
in  favour  of  your  taking  places  for  your  "young 
ladies  "  as  well  as  for  yourselves.  The  writer  looks 
too  wide  abroad  to  see  what  lies  at  his  feet.  He  is 
in  Asia  citing  the  Council  of  Laodicea  against  the 
theatre.  He  is  in  Africa  vociferating,  as  the  Council 
of  Carthage  did,  against  audiences.  He  is  in  Europe, 
at  Aries,  where  the  fathers  decided  that  no  actor 
should  be  admitted  to  the  sacrament.  Finally,  he 
unites  all  these  councils  together  at  Constantinople, 
and  in  a  three-piled  judgment  sends  stage,  actors, 
and  audiences  to  Gehenna. 

If  you  would  only  remember  that  many  royal  and 
noble  men  have  been  slain  when  in  tho  theatre,  on 
their  way  thither,  or  returning  thence,  you  will  have 
a  decent  horror  of  risking  a  similar  fate  in  like  local- 
ities. He  has  known  actors  who  have  died  after  the 
play  was  over ;  he  would  fain  have  you  believe  that 
there  is  something  in  that.  And  when  he  has  inti- 
mated that  theatres  have  been  burnt  and  audiences 
suffocated ;  that  stages  have  been  swept  down  by 
stonns  and  spectators  trodden  to  death ;  that  less 
than  forty  years  previous  to  the  time  of  his  writing 
eight  persons  had  been  killed  and  many  more  wounded 
by  the  fall  of  a  London  playhouse ;  and  that  a  simi- 


THE  DECLINE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  -PLAYERS        37 

lar  calamity  had  lately  occurred  in  the  city  of  Lyons, 
—  the  writer  conceives  he  has  advanced  sufficient 
argument,  and  administered  more  than  enough  of 
admonition  to  deter  any  person  from  entering  a 
theatre  henceforth  and  for  ever. 

This  paper  pellet  had  not  long  been  printed  when 
the  vexed  author  might  have  seen  four  actors  sailing 
joyously  along  the  Strand.  There  they  are,  Master 
Moore  (there  were  no  managers  then ;  they  were 
"masters"  till  the  Georgian  era),  Master  Moore, 
heavy  Foster,  mirthful  Guilman,  and  airy  Townsend, 
The  master  carries  in  his  pocket  a  royal  license  to 
form  a  company,  whose  members,  in  honour  of  the 
king's  sister,  shall  be  known  as  "  the  Lady  Elizabeth's 
servants ; "  with  permission  to  act  when  and  where 
they  please  in  and  about  the  city  of  London  unless 
when  the  plague  shall  be  more  than  ordinarily 
prevalent. 

There  was  no  present  opportunity  to  touch  these 
licensed  companies ;  and,  accordingly,  a  sect  of  men 
who  professed  to  unite  loyalty  with  orthodoxy,  look- 
ing eagerly  about  them  for  offenders,  detected  an 
unlicensed  fraternity  playing  a  comedy  in  the  old 
house,  before  noticed,  of  Sir  John  Yorke.  The  result 
of  this  was  the  assembling  of  a  nervously  agitated 
troop  of  offenders  in  the  Star  Chamber.  One  Chris- 
topher Mallory  was  made  the  scapegoat,  for  the  satis- 
factory reason  that  in  the  comedy  alluded  to  he  had 
represented  the  devil,  and  in  the  last  scene  descended 
through  the  stage  with  a  figure  of  King  James  on 
his  back,  remarking  the  while  that  such  was  the  road 
by  which  all  Protestants  must  necessarily  travel ! 
Poor  Mallory,  condeuiued  to  fine  and  imprisonment, 


3S  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

vainly  observed  that  there  were  two  points,  he 
thought,  in  his  favour  —  that  he  had  not  played  in 
the  piece  and  had  not  been  even  present  in  the 
house ! 

Meanwhile  the  public  flocked  to  their  favourite 
houses,  and  fortune  seemed  to  be  most  blandly  smil- 
ing on  "  masters,"  when  there  suddenly  appeared  the 
monster  mortar  manufactured  by  Prynne,  and  dis- 
charged by  him  over  London  with  an  attendant 
amount  of  thunder,  which  shook  every  building  in 
the  metropolis.  Prynne  had  just  previously  seen  the 
painters  busily  at  work  in  beautifying  the  old  "  For- 
tune," and  the  decorators  gilding  the  horns  of  the 
"Red  Bull."  He  had  been  down  to  Whitefriars, 
and  had  there  beheld  a  new  theatre  rising  near  the 
old  time-honoured  site.  He  was  unable  to  be  longer 
silent,  and  in  1633  out  came  his  "  Histrio-Mastix," 
consisting,  from  title-page  \.o  finis,  of  a  thousand  and 
several  hundred  pages. 

Prynne,  in  some  sense,  did  not  lead  opinion  against 
the  stage,  but  followed  that  of  individuals  who  suf- 
fered certain  discomfort  from  their  vicinity  to  the 
chief  house  in  Blackfriars.  In  163 1  the  church- 
wardens and  constables  petitioned  Laud,  on  behalf 
of  the  whole  parish,  for  the  removal  of  the  players, 
whose  presence  was  a  grievance,  it  was  asserted,  to 
Blackfriars  generally.  The  shopkeepers  affirm  that 
their  goods,  exposed  to  sale,  are  swept  off  their 
stalls  by  the  coaches  and  people  sweeping  onward  to 
the  playhouse ;  that  the  concourse  is  so  great,  the 
inhabitants  are  unable  to  take  beer  or  coal  into  their 
houses  while  it  continues  ;  that  to  get  through  Lud- 
gate  to  the  water  is  just  impossible;  and  if  a  fire 


THE  DECLINE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  PLAYERS        39 

break  out,  Heaven  help  them,  how  can  succour  be 
brought  to  the  sufferers  through  such  mobs  of  men 
and  vehicles  ?  Christenings  are  disturbed  in  their 
joy  by  them,  and  the  sorrow  of  burials  intruded  on. 
Persons  of  honour  dare  not  go  abroad,  or,  if  abroad, 
dare  not  venture  home  while  the  theatre  is  open. 
And  then  there  is  that  other  house,  Edward  Alleyn's, 
rebuilding  in  Golden  Lane,  and  will  not  the  Council 
look  to  it  ? 

The  Council  answer  that  Queen  Henrietta  Maria 
is  well  affected  toward  plays,  and  that  therefore 
good  regulation  is  more  to  be  provided  than  sup- 
pression decreed.  There  must  not  be  more  than  two 
houses,  they  say ;  one  on  Bankside,  where  the  lord 
chamberlain's  servants  may  act ;  the  other  in  Middle- 
sex, for  which  license  may  be  given  to  Alleyn,  "ser- 
vant of  the  lord  admiral,"  in  Golden  Lane.  Each 
company  is  to  play  but  twice  a  week,  "  forbearing  to 
play  on  the  Sabbath  Day,  in  Lent,  and  in  times  of 
infection." 

Here  is  a  prospect  for  old  Blackfriars,  but  it  is 
doomed  to  fall.  The  house  had  been  condemned  in 
1619,  and  cannot  longer  be  tolerated.  But  compen- 
sation must  be  awarded.  The  players,  bold  fellows, 
claim  ;^2i,ooo!  The  referees  award  ;^3,ooo,  and 
the  delighted  inhabitants  offer  ;^ioo  toward  it  to 
get  rid  of  the  people  who  resort  to  the  players 
rather  than  of  the  players  themselves. 

Then  spake  out  Prynne.  He  does  not  tell  us  how 
many  prayer-books  had  been  recently  published,  but 
he  notes,  with  a  cry  of  anguish,  the  printing  of  forty 
thousand  plays  within  the  last  two  years.  "There 
are  five  devils'  chapels,"  he  says,  "  in  London ;  and 


40  THEIR  AUJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

yet  in  more  extensive  Rome,  in  Nero's  days,  there 
were  but  three,  and  those,"  he  adds,  "  were  three  too 
many!"  When  a  writer  gets  beyond  statistics  he 
grows  rude ;  but  he  was  sincere,  and  accepted  all  the 
responsibility  of  the  course  taken  by  him,  advisedly. 

While  the  anger  excited  by  this  attack  on  pas- 
times favoured  by  the  king  was  yet  hot,  the  assault 
itself  was  met  by  a  defiance.  The  gentlemen  of  the 
Inns  of  Court  closed  their  law-books,  got  up  a  mask, 
and  played  it  at  Whitehall  in  the  presence  of  a  de- 
lighted audience  consisting  of  royal  and  noble  per- 
sonages. The  most  play-loving  of  the  lords  followed 
the  example  afforded  by  the  lawyers,  and  the  king 
himself  assumed  the  buskin,  and  turned  actor  for  the 
nonce.  Tom  Carew  was  busy  with  superintending 
the  rehearsals  of  his  "  Caelum  Britannicum,"  and  in 
urging  honest  and  melodious  Will  Lawes  to  progress 
more  rapidly  with  the  music.  Cavalier  Will  was  not 
to  be  hurried,  but  did  his  work  steadily ;  and  Prynne 
might  have  heard  him  and  his  brother  Harry  hum- 
ming the  airs  over  as  they  walked  together  across 
the  park  to  Whitehall.  When  the  day  of  representa- 
tion arrived,  great  was  the  excitement,  and  intense 
the  delight  of  some  and  the  scorn  of  others.  Among 
the  noble  actors  who  rode  down  to  the  palace  was 
Rich,  Earl  of  Holland.  All  passed  off  so  pleasantly 
that  no  one  dreamed  it  was  the  inauguration  of  a 
struggle  in  which  Prynne  was  to  lose  his  estate,  his 
freedom,  and  his  ears  ;  the  king  and  the  earl  their 
heads  ;  while  gallant  Will  Lawes,  as  honest  a  man 
as  any  of  them,  was,  a  dozen  years  after,  to  be  found 
among  the  valiant  dead  who  fell  at  the  siege  of  Chester. 

Ere  this  (UnoHement  to  a  tragedy  so  mirthfully 


THE  DECLINE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  PLAYERS        41 

commenced  had  been  reached,  there  were  other  defi- 
ances cast  in  the  teeth  of  audacious  but  too  harshly- 
treated  Prynne.  There  was  a  reverend  playwright 
about  town  whom  Eton  loved  and  Oxford  highly 
prized  ;  Ben  Jonson  called  him  his  "  son,"  and  Bishop 
Fell,  who  presumed  to  give  an  opinion  on  subjects  of 
which  he  was  ignorant,  pronounced  the  Rev.  William 
Cartwright  to  be  "  the  utmost  that  man  could  come 
to ! "  For  the  Christ  Church  students  at  Oxford 
Cartwright  wrote  the  "Royal  Slave,"  one  of  three 
out  of  his  four  plays  which  sleep  under  a  right- 
eous oblivion.  The  king  and  queen  went  down  to 
witness  the  performance  of  the  scholastic  amateurs ; 
and,  considering  that  a  main  incident  of  the  piece 
comprises  a  revolt  in  order  to  achieve  some  reason- 
able liberty  for  an  oppressed  people,  the  subject  may 
be  considered  more  suggestive  than  felicitous.  The 
fortunes  of  many  of  the  audience  were  about  to 
undergo  mutation,  but  there  was  an  actor  there 
whose  prosperity  commenced  from  that  day.  All 
the  actors  played  with  spirit,  but  this  especial  one 
manifested  such  self-possession,  displayed  such  judg- 
ment, and  exhibited  such  powers  of  conception  and 
execution,  that  king,  queen,  and  all  the  illustrious 
audience  showered  down  upon  him  applauses  — 
hearty,  loud,  and  long.  His  name  was  Busby.  He 
had  been  so  poor  that  he  received  ;^5  to  enable  him 
to  take  his  degree  of  B.  A.  Westminster  was  soon 
to  possess  him,  for  nearly  threescore  years  the  most 
famous  of  her  "masters."  "A  very  great  man!" 
said  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley  ;  "  he  whipped  my  grand- 
father ! " 

When  Prynne,   and    Bastwick,  and  Burton  —  re- 


42  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

leasea  irom  prison  by  the  Long  Parliament  —  entered 
London  in  triumph,  with  wreaths  of  ivy  and  rosemary 
round  their  hats,  the  players  who  stood  on  the  cause- 
way, or  at  tavern  windows,  to  witness  the  passing  of 
the  victims,  must  have  felt  uneasy  at  their  arch-enemy 
being  loose  again.  Between  politics,  perverse  parties, 
the  plague,  and  the  Parliament,  the  condition  of  the 
actors  fell  from  bad  to  worse.  In  a  dialogue  which 
professedly  passed  at  this  time  between  Cane  of  the 
"  Fortune "  and  Reed  of  the  "  Friars,"  one  of  the 
speakers  deplores  the  going-out  of  all  good  old  things, 
and  the  other,  sighingly,  remarks  that  true  Latin  is 
as  little  in  fashion  at  Inns  of  Court  as  good  clothes 
are  at  Cambridge.  At  length  arrived  the  fatal  year 
1647,  when,  after  some  previous  attempts  to  abolish 
the  vocation  of  the  actors,  the  Parliament  disbanded 
the  army  and  suppressed  the  players.  The  latter 
struggled  manfully,  but  not  so  successfully,  as  the 
soldiery.  They  were  treated  with  less  consideration  ; 
the  decree  of  February,  1647,  informed  them  that 
they  were  no  better  than  heathens ;  that  they  were 
intolerable  to  Christians  ;  that  they  were  incorrigible 
and  vicious  offenders,  who  would  now  be  compelled 
by  whip,  and  stocks,  and  gyves,  and  prison  fare,  to 
obey  ordinances  which  they  had  hitherto  treated  with 
contempt.  Had  not  the  glorious  Elizabeth  stigma- 
tised them  as  "  rogues,"  and  the  sagacious  James  as 
"  vagabonds  ? "  Mayors  and  sheriffs,  and  high  and 
low  constables  were  let  loose  upon  them,  and  encour- 
aged to  be  merciless  ;  menace  was  piled  upon  menace ; 
money  penalties  were  hinted  at  in  addition  to  cor- 
poreal punishments  —  and,  after  all,  plays  were 
enacted  in  spite  of  this  counter-enactment. 


THE  DECLINE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  PLAYERS        43 

But  these  last  enactors  were  not  to  be  trifled  with ; 
and  the  autumn  saw  accomplished  what  had  not  been 
effected  in  the  spring.  The  P effect  Weekly  Account 
for  "Wednesday,  Oct.  20,  to  Tuesday,  Oct.  26," 
informs  its  readers  that  on  "Friday  an  ordinance 
passed  both  Houses  for  suppressing  of  stage-plays, 
which  of  late  began  to  come  in  use  again."  The 
ordinance  itself  is  as  uncivil  a  document  as  ever  pro- 
ceeded from  ruffled  authority  ;  and  the  framers  clearly 
considered  that  if  they  had  not  crushed  the  stage  for 
ever,  they  had  unquestionably  frozen  out  the  actors 
as  long  as  the  existing  government  should  endure. 

At  this  juncture,  historians  inform  us  that  many 
of  the  ousted  actors  took  military  service  —  generally, 
as  was  to  be  expected,  on  the  royalist  side.  But,  in 
1647,  the  struggle  was  virtually  over.  The  great 
fire  was  quenched,  and  there  was  only  a  trampling 
out  of  sparks  and  embers.  Charles  Hart,  the  actor, 
—  grandson  of  Shakespeare's  sister,  —  holds  a  prom- 
inent place  among  these  players  turned  soldiers,  as 
one  who  rose  to  be  a  major  in  Rupert's  Horse. 
Charles  Hart,  however,  was  at  this  period  only  seven- 
teen years  of  age,  and  more  than  a  year  and  a  half 
had  elapsed  since  Rupert  had  been  ordered  beyond 
sea,  for  his  weak  defence  of  Bristol.  Rupert's  major 
was,  probably,  that  very  "jolly  good  fellow"  with 
whom  Pepys  used  to  take  wine  and  anchovies  to  such 
excess  as  to  make  it  necessary  for  his  "  girl "  to  rise 
early,  and  fetch  her  sick  master  fresh  water,  where- 
with to  slake  his  thirst,  in  the  morning. 

The  enrolment  of  actors  in  either  army  occurred 
at  an  earlier  period,  and  one  Hart  was  certainly 
among   them.    Thus  Alleyn,  erst  of  the  Cockpit, 


44  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

filled  the  part  of  quartermaster-general  to  the  king's 
army  at  Oxford.  Burt  became  a  cornet,  Shatterel 
was  something  less  dignified  in  the  same  branch  of 
the  service,  —  the  cavalry.  These  survived  to  see 
the  old  curtain  once  more  drawn  ;  but  record  is  made 
of  the  death  of  one  gallant  player,  said  to  be  Will 
Robinson,  whom  doughty  Harrison  encountered  in 
fight,  and  through  whom  he  passed  his  terrible 
sword,  shouting  at  the  same  time :  "  Cursed  is  he 
that  doeth  the  work  of  the  Lord  negligently !  "  This 
serious  bit  of  stage  business  would  have  been  more 
dramatically  arranged  had  Robinson  been  encountered 
by  Swanston,  a  player  of  Presbyterian  tendencies, 
who  served  in  the  Parliamentary  army.  A  ♦*  terrific 
broadsword  combat "  between  the  two  might  have 
been  an  encounter  which  both  armies  might  have 
looked  at  with  interest,  and  supported  by  applause. 
Of  the  military  fortunes  of  the  actors  none  was  so 
favourable  as  brave  little  Mohun's,  who  crossed  to 
Flanders,  returned  a  major,  and  was  subsequently  set 
down  in  the  "  cast "  under  his  military  title.  Old 
Taylor  retired,  with  that  original  portrait  of  Shake- 
speare to  solace  him,  which  was  to  pass  by  the  hands 
of  Davenant,  to  that  glory  of  our  stage,  "incompa- 
rable Betterton."  Pollard,  too,  withdrew,  and  lusty 
Lowen,  after  a  time,  kicked  both  sock  and  buskin  out 
of  sight,  clapped  on  an  apron,  and  appeared,  with 
well-merited  success,  as  landlord  of  the  Three  Pigeons, 
at  Brentford. 

The  actors  could  not  comprehend  why  their  office 
was  suppressed,  while  the  bear-baiters  were  putting 
money  in  both  pockets,  and  non-edifying  puppet- 
shows  were  enriching  their  proprietors.     If  Shake- 


THE  DECLINE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  PLAYERS        45 

speare  was  driven  from  Blackfriars  and  the  Cockpit, 
was  it  fair  to  allow  "  Bel  and  the  Dragon "  to  be 
enacted  by  dolls,  at  the  foot  of  Holbom  Bridge? 
The  players  were  told  that  the  public  would  profit  by 
the  abolition  of  their  vocation.  Loose  young  gentle- 
men, fast  merchant-factors,  and  wild  young  appren- 
tices were  no  longer  to  be  seen,  it  was  said,  hanging 
about  the  theatres,  spending  all  their  spare  money, 
much  that  they  could  not  spare,  and  not  a  little  which 
was  not  theirs  to  spend.  It  was  uncivilly  suggested 
that  the  actors  were  a  merry  sort  of  thieves,  who 
used  to  attach  themselves  to  the  puny  gallants  who 
sought  their  society,  and  strip  them  of  the  gold 
pieces  in  their  pouches,  the  bodkin  on  their  thighs, 
the  girdles  buckled  to  give  them  shape,  and  the  very 
beavers  jauntily  plumed  to  lend  them  grace  and 
stature. 

In  some  of  the  streets  by  the  riverside  a  tragedy- 
king  or  two  found  refuge  with  kinsfolk.  The  old 
theatres  stood  erect  and  desolate,  and  the  owners, 
with  hands  in  empty  pockets,  asked  how  they  were 
to  be  expected  to  pay  ground  rent,  now  that  they 
earned  nothing  ?  whereas  their  afternoon  share  used 
to  be  twenty  —  ay,  thirty  shillings,  sir !  And  see, 
the  flag  is  still  flying  above  the  old  house  over  the 
water,  and  a  lad  who  erst  played  under  it  looks  up  at 
the  banner  with  a  proud  sorrow.  An  elder  actor 
puts  his  hands  on  the  lad's  shoulder,  and  cries : 
"  Before  the  old  scene  is  on  again,  boy,  thy  face  will 
be  as  battered  as  the  flag  there  on  the  roof-top ! " 
And  as  this  elder  actor  passes  on,  he  has  a  word 
with  a  fellow  mime  who  has  been  less  provident  than 
he,  and  whose  present  necessities  he  relieves  accord- 


46  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

ing  to  his  means.  Near  them  stand  a  couple  of 
deplorable-looking  "doorkeepers,"  or,  as  we  should 
call  them  now,  "money-takers,"  and  the  well-to-do 
ex-actor  has  his  illusive  joke  at  their  old  rascality, 
and  affects  to  condole  with  them  that  the  time  is 
gone  by  when  they  used  to  scratch  their  necks  where 
it  itched  not,  and  then  dropped  shilling  and  half- 
crown  pieces  behind  their  collars !  But  they  were 
not  the  only  poor  rogues  who  suffered  by  revolution. 
That  slipshod  tapster,  whom  a  guest  is  cudgelling  at 
a  tavern-door,  was  once  the  proudest  and  most  ex- 
travagantly dressed  of  the  tobacco-men  whose  notice 
the  smokers  in  the  pit  gingerly  entreated,  and  who 
used  to  vend,  at  a  penny  the  pipeful,  tobacco  that 
was  not  worth  a  shilling  a  cart-load.  And  behold 
other  evidences  of  the  hardness  of  the  times  !  Those 
shuffling  fiddlers  who  so  humbly  peer  through  the 
low  windows  into  the  tavern  room,  and  meekly 
inquire :  "  Will  you  have  any  music,  gentlemen  ? " 
they  are  tuneful  relics  of  the  band  who  were  wont  to 
shed  harmony  from  the  balcony  above  the  stage,  and 
play  in  fashionable  houses,  at  the  rate  of  ten  shillings 
for  each  hour.  Now,  they  shamble  about  in  pairs, 
and  resignedly  accept  the  smallest  dole,  and  think 
mournfully  of  the  time  when  they  heralded  the 
coming  of  kings,  and  softly  tuned  the  dirge  at  the 
burying  of  Ophelia ! 

Even  these  have  pity  to  spare  for  a  lower  class 
than  themselves,  —  the  journeyman  playwrights, 
whom  the  managers  once  retained  at  an  annual  sti- 
pend and  "  beneficial  second  nights."  The  old  play- 
wrights were  fain  to  turn  pamphleteers,  but  their 
works  sold  only  for  a  penny,  and  that  is  the  reason 


THE  DECLINE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  PLAYERS        47 

why  those  two  shabby-genteel  people,  who  have  just 
nodded  sorrowfully  to  the  fiddlers,  are  not  joyously 
tippling  sack  and  Gascony  wine,  but  are  imbibing 
unorthodox  ale  and  heretical  small  beer.  "  Cunctis 
graviora  cothurnis  I "  murmurs  the  old  actor  whose 
father  was  a  schoolmaster ;  "  it's  more  pitiful  than 
any  of  your  tragedies  !  " 

The  distress  was  severe,  but  the  profession  had  to 
abide  it.  Much  amendment  was  promised,  if  only 
something  of  the  old  life  might  be  pursued  without 
peril  of  the  stocks  or  the  whipping-post.  The  authori- 
ties would  not  heed  these  promises,  but  grimly  smiled, 
—  at  the  actors,  who  undertook  to  promote  virtue ; 
the  poets,  who  engaged  to  be  proper  of  speech ;  the 
managers,  who  bound  themselves  to  prohibit  the 
entrance  of  all  temptations  into  "the  sixpenny 
rooms ; "  and  the  tobacco-men,  who  swore  with 
earnest  irreverence,  to  vend  nothing  but  the  pure 
Spanish  leaf,  even  in  the  threepenny  galleries. 

But  the  tragedy  which  ended  with  the  killing  of 
the  king  gave  sad  hearts  to  the  comedians,  who  were 
in  worse  plight  than  before,  being  now  deprived  of 
hope  itself.  One  or  two  contrived  to  print  and  sell 
old  plays  for  their  own  benefit ;  a  few  authors  con- 
tinued to  add  a  new  piece,  now  and  then,  to  the 
stock,  and  that  there  were  readers  for  them  we  may 
conjecture  from  the  fact  of  the  advertisements  which 
began  to  appear  in  the  papers,  —  sometimes  of  the 
publication  of  a  solitary  play,  at  another  of  the  entire 
dramatic  works  of  that  most  noble  lady,  the  Marchion- 
ess of  Newcastle.  The  actors  themselves  united 
boldness  with  circumspection.  Richard  Cox,  drop- 
ping  the  words  play  and  player,  constructed  a  mixed 


48  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

entertainment  in  which  he  spoke  and  sang,  and  on 
one  occasion  so  aptly  mimicked  the  character  of  an 
artisan,  that  a  master  in  the  craft  kindly  and  earnestly 
offered  to  engage  him.  During  the  suppression, 
Cowley's  "  Guardian  "  was  privately  played  at  Cam- 
bridge. The  authorities  would  seem  to  have  winked 
at  these  private  representations,  or  to  have  declined 
noticing  them  until  after  the  expiration  of  the  period 
within  which  the  actors  were  exposed  to  punishment. 
Too  great  audacity,  however,  was  promptly  and  se- 
verely visited,  fr  m  the  earliest  days  after  the  issuing 
of  the  prohibitory  decree.  A  first-rate  troupe  obtained 
possession  of  the  Cockpit  for  a  few  days,  in  1648. 
They  had  played,  unmolested,  for  three  days,  and 
were  in  the  very  midst  ■  f  the  «'  Bloody  Brother,"  on 
the  fourth,  when  the  house  was  invaded  by  the 
Puritan  soldiery,  the  actors  captured,  the  audience 
dispersed,  and  the  seats  and  the  stage  righteously 
smashed  into  fragments.  The  players  (some  of  them 
the  most  accomrlished  of  their  day)  were  paraded 
through  the  streets  in  all  their  stage  finery,  and 
clapped  into  the  Gate  House  and  other  prisons, 
whence  they  were  too  happy  to  escape,  after  much 
unseemly  treatment,  at  the  cost  of  all  the  theatrical 
property  which  they  had  carried  on  their  backs  into 
durance  vile. 

This  severity,  visited  in  other  houses  as  well  as 
the  Cockpit,  caused  some  actors  .0  despair,  while  it 
rendered  others  only  a  little  more  discreet.  Rhodes, 
the  old  prompter  at  Blackfriars,  turned  bookseller, 
and  opened  a  shop  at  Charing  Cross.  There  he  and 
one  Betterton,  an  ex-under-cook  in  the  kitchen  of 
Charles  I.,  who  lived  in  Tothill  Street,  talked  mourn- 


THE  DECLINE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  PLAYERS        49 

fully  over  the  past,  and,  according  to  their  respective 
humours,  of  the  future.  The  cook's  sons  listened 
the  while,  and  one  of  them  especially  took  delight  in 
hearing  old  stories  of  players,  and  in  cultivating  an 
acquaintance  with  the  old  theatrical  bookseller.  In 
the  neighbourhood  of  the  ex-prompter's  shop,  knots 
of  very  slenderly  built  players  used  to  congregate  at 
certain  seasons.  A  delegate  from  their  number 
might  be  seen  whispering  to  the  citizen  captain  in 
command  at  Whitehall,  who,  as  wicked  people  re- 
ported, consented,  for  a  "  consideration,"  not  to  bring 
his  redcoats  down  to  the  Bull  or  other  localities 
where  private  stages  were  erected,  —  especially  during 
the  time  of  Bartholomew  Fair,  Christmas,  and  other 
joyous  tides.  To  his  shame  be  it  recorded,  the  cap- 
tain occasionally  broke  his  promise,  or  the  poor  actors 
had  fallen  short  in  their  purchase-money  of  his  pledge, 
and  in  the  very  middle  of  the  piece  the  little  theatre 
'would  be  invaded,  and  the  audience  be  rendered 
subject  to  as  much  virtuous  indignation  as  the 
actors. 

The  cause  of  the  latter,  however,  found  supporters 
in  many  of  the  members  of  the  aristocracy.  Close 
at  hand,  near  Rhodes's  shop,  lived  Lord  Hatton,  first 
of  the  four  peers  so  styled.  His  house  was  in  Scot- 
land Yard.  His  lands  had  gone  by  forfeiture,  but 
the  proud  old  Cheshire  landowner  cared  more  for 
the  preservation  of  the  deed  by  which  he  and  his 
ancestors  had  held  them,  than  he  did  for  the  loss  of 
the  acres  themselves.  Hatton  was  the  employer,  so 
to  speak,  of  Dugdale,  and  the  patron  of  literary  men 
and  of  actors,  and  —  it  must  be  added  —  of  very 
frivolous  company  besides.      He  devoted  much  time 


so  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

to  the  preparation  of  a  Book  of  Psalms  and  the  ill- 
treatment  of  his  wife  ;  and  was  altogether  an  eccentric 
personage,  for  he  recommended  Lambert's  daughter 
as  a  personally  and  politically  suitable  wife  for  Charles 
II.,  and  afterward  discarded  his  own  eldest  son  for 
marrying  that  incomparable  lady.  In  Hatton,  the 
players  had  a  supreme  patron  in  town ;  and  they 
found  friends  as  serviceable  to  them  in  the  noblemen 
and  gentlemen  residing  a  few  miles  from  the  capital. 
These  patrons  opened  their  houses  to  the  actors,  for 
stage  representations  ;  but  even  this  private  patronage 
had  to  be  distributed  discreetly.  Goffe,  the  light- 
limbed  lad  who  used  to  play  women's  parts  at  the 
"  Blackfriars,"  was  generally  employed  as  messenger 
to  announce  individually  to  the  audience  when  they 
were  to  assemble,  and  to  the  actors  the  time  and 
place  for  the  play.  One  of  the  mansions  wherein 
these  dramatic  entertainments  were  most  frequently 
given,  was  Holland  House,  Kensington.  It  was  then 
held  and  inhabited  by  the  widowed  countess  of  that 
unstable  Earl  of  Holland,  whose  head  had  fallen  on 
the  scaffold,  in  March,  1649  >  but  this  granddaughter 
of  old  Sir  Walter  Cope,  who  lost  Camden  House  at 
cards  to  a  Cheapside  mercer,  Sir  Baptist  Hicks,  was 
a  strong-minded  woman,  and  perhaps  found  some 
consolation  in  patronising  the  pleasures  which  the 
enemies  of  her  defunct  lord  so  stringently  prohibited. 
When  the  play  was  over,  a  collection  was  made 
among  the  noble  spectators,  whose  contributions  were 
divided  between  the  players,  according  to  the  measure 
of  their  merits.  This  done,  they  wended  their  way 
down  the  avenue  to  the  high-road,  where  probably, 
on  some  bright  summer  afternoon,  if  a  part  of  them 


THE  DECLINE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  PLAYERS        51 

prudently  returned  afoot  to  town,  a  joyous  but  less 
prudent  few  "  paddled  it "  to  Brentford,  and  made  a 
short  but  glad  night  of  it  with  their  brother  of  the 
"Three  Pigeons." 

At  the  most  this  was  but  a  poor  life ;  but  such  as 
it  was,  the  players  were  obliged  to  make  the  best  of 
it.  If  they  were  impatient,  it  was  not  without  some 
reason,  for  though  Oliver  despised  the  stage,  he  could 
condescend  to  laugh  at,  and  with,  men  of  less  dignity 
in  their  vocation  than  actors.  Buffoonery  was  not 
entirely  expelled  from  his  otherwise  grave  court.  At 
the  marriage  festival  of  his  daughter  Frances  and  his 
son-in-law,  Mr.  Rich,  the  Protector  would  not  tolerate 
the  utterance  of  a  line  from  Shakespeare,  expressed 
from  the  lips  of  a  player ;  but  there  were  hired  buf- 
foons at  that  entertainment,  which  they  well-nigh 
brought  to  a  tragical  conclusion.  A  couple  of  these 
saucy  fellows  seeing  Sir  Thomas  Hillingsley,  the  old 
gentleman-usher  to  the  Queen  of  Bohemia,  gravely 
dancing,  sought  to  excite  a  laugh  by  trying  to  blacken 
his  face  with  a  burnt  cork.  The  high-bred,  solemn 
old  gentleman  was  so  aroused  to  anger  by  this  un- 
seemly audacity,  that  he  drew  his  dagger,  and,  but 
for  swift  interference,  would  have  run  it  beneath  the 
fifth  rib  of  the  most  active  of  his  rude  assailants.  On 
this  occasion,  Cromwell  himself  was  almost  as  lively 
as  the  hired  jesters  ;  snatching  off  the  wig  of  his  son 
Richard,  he  feigned  to  fling  it  in  the  fire,  but  suddenly 
passing  the  wig  under  him,  and  seating  himself  upon 
it,  he  pretended  that  it  had  been  destroyed,  amid  the 
servile  applause  of  the  edified  spectators.  The  actors 
might  reasonably  have  argued  that  "Hamlet,"  in 
Scotland  Yard  or  at  Holland  House,  was  a  more 


5*  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

worthy  entertainment  than  such  grown-up  follies  in 
the  gallery  at  Whitehall. 

Those  follies  ceased  to  be ;  Oliver  had  passed  away, 
and  Richard  had  laid  down  the  greatness  which  had 
never  sat  well  upon  him.  Important  changes  were 
at  hand,  and  the  merry  rattle  of  Monk's  drums  com- 
ing up  Gray's  Inn  Road,  welcomed  by  thousands  of 
dusty  spectators,  announced  no  more  cheering  pros- 
pect to  any  class  than  to  the  actors.  The  Oxford 
vintner's  son.  Will  Davenant,  might  be  seen  bustUng 
about  in  happy  hurry,  eagerly  showing  young  Better- 
ton  how  Taylor  used  to  play  Hamlet,  under  the 
instruction  of  Burbage,  and  announcing  bright  days 
to  open-mouthed  Kynaston,  ready  at  a  moment's 
warning  to  leap  over  his  master's  counter,  and  take 
his  standing  at  the  balcony  as  the  smooth-cheeked 
Juliet. 

Meanwhile,  beaming  old  Rhodes,  with  a  head  full 
of  memories  of  the  joyous  Blackfriars'  days,  and  the 
merry  afternoons  over  the  water,  at  the  Globe,  leaving 
his  once  apprentice,  Betterton,  listening  to  Davenant's 
stage  histories,  and  Kynaston,  not  yet  out  of  his 
time,  longing  to  flaunt  it  before  an  audience,  took 
his  own  way  to  Hyde  Park,  where  Monk  was  en- 
camped, and  there  obtained,  in  due  time,  from  that 
far-seeing  individual,  license  to  once  more  raise  the 
theatrical  flag,  enrol  the  actors,  light  up  the  stage, 
and,  in  a  word,  revive  the  English  theatre.  In  a  few 
days  the  drama  commenced  its  new  career  in  the 
Cockpit,  in  Drury  Lane ;  and  this  fact  seemed  so 
significant,  as  to  the  character  of  General  Monk's 
tastes,  that,  subsequently,  when  he  and  the  Council 
of  State  dined  in  the  city  halls,  the  companies  treated 


THE  DECLINE  AND  FALL  OF  THE  PLAYERS        53 

their  guests,  after  dinner,  with  satirical  farces,  such 
as  "  Citizen  and  Soldier,"  "  Country  Tom  "  and  "  City 
Dick,"  with,  as  the  newspapers  inform  us,  "dancing 
and  singing,  many  shapes  and  ghosts,  and  the  like ; 
and  all  to  please  his  Excellency  the  Lord  General." 

The  English  stage  owes  a  debt  of  gratitude  to 
both  Monk  and  Rhodes.  The  former  made  glorious 
summer  of  the  actors'  winter  of  discontent ;  and  the 
latter  inaugurated  the  Restoration  by  introducing 
young  Betterton.  The  son  of  Charles  I.'s  cook  was, 
for  fifty-one  years,  the  pride  of  the  English  theatre. 
His  acting  was  witnessed  by  more  than  one  old 
contemporary  of  Shakespeare,  —  the  poet's  younger 
brother  being  among  them,  —  he  surviving  till  shortly 
after  the  accession  of  Charles  II.  The  destitute 
actors  warmed  into  life  and  laughter  again  beneath 
the  sunshine  of  his  presence.  His  dignity,  his  mar- 
vellous talent,  his  versatility,  his  imperishable  fame, 
are  all  well  known  and  acknowledged.  His  industry 
is  indicated  by  the  fact  that  he  created  one  hundred 
and  thirty  new  characters!  Among  them  were 
Jafiier  and  Valentine,  three  Virginiuses,  and  Sir 
John  Brute.  He  was  as  mirthful  in  Falstaff  as  he 
was  majestic  in  Alexander ;  and  the  craft  of  his 
Ulysses,  the  grace  and  passion  of  his  Hamlet,  the 
terrible  force  of  his  Othello,  were  not  more  remark- 
able than  the  low  comedy  of  his  Old  Bachelor,  the 
airiness  of  his  Woodville,  or  the  cowardly  bluster 
of  his  Thersites.  The  old  actors  who  had  been 
frozen  out,  and  the  new  who  had^  much  to  learn, 
could  not  have  rallied  round  a  more  noble  or  a 
worthier  chief  ;  for  Betterton  was  not  a  greater  actor 
than  he  was  a  true  and  honourable  gentleman.    Only 


54  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

for  him,  the  old  frozen-outs  would  have  fared  but 
badly.  He  enriched  himself  and  them,  and,  as  long 
as  he  lived,  gave  dignity  to  his  profession.  The 
humble  lad,  born  in  Tothill  Street,  before  monarchy 
and  the  stage  went  down,  had  a  royal  funeral  in 
Westminster  Abbey,  after  dying  in  harness  almost 
in  sight  of  the  lamps.  He  deserved  no  less,  for  he 
was  the  king  of  an  art  which  had  well-nigh  perished 
in  the  Commonwealth  times,  and  he  was  a  monarch 
who  probably  has  never  since  had,  altogether,  his 
equal.  Off,  as  on  the  stage,  he  was  exemplary  in 
his  bearing ;  true  to  every  duty ;  as  good  a  country 
gentleman  on  his  farm  in  Berkshire  as  he  was  perfect 
actor  in  town;  pursuing  with  his  excellent  wife  the 
even  tenor  of  his  way ;  not  tempted  by  the  vices  of 
his  time,  nor  disturbed  by  its  politics ;  not  tippling 
like  Underbill ;  not  plotting  and  betraying  the  plotters 
against  William,  like  Goodman,  nor  carrying  letters 
for  a  costly  fee  between  London  and  St.  Germains, 
like  Scudamore.  If  there  had  been  a  leading  player 
on  the  stage  in  1647,  with  the  qualities,  public  and 
private,  which  distinguished  Betterton,  there  perhaps 
would  have  been  a  less  severe  ordinance  than  that 
which  inflicted  so  much  misery  on  the  actors,  and 
which,  after  a  long  decline,  brought  about  a  fall ; 
from  which  they  were,  however,  as  we  shall  see, 
destined  to  rise  and  flourish. 


CHAPTER   in. 

THE    "BOY   actresses"    AND    THE    "YOUNG   LADIES*' 

The  Theatre  Royal,  Drury  Lane,  is  the  "sacred 
ground  "  of  the  English  drama,  since  the  restoration 
of  monarchy.  At  the  Cockpit  (Pitt  Street  remains 
a  memory  of  the  place),  otherwise  called  the  Phoenix, 
in  the  "  lane  "  aboved  named,  the  old  English  actors 
had  uttered  their  last  words  before  they  were  silenced. 
In  a  reconstruction  of  the  edifice  near,  rather  than 
on,  the  old  site,  the  young  English  actors,  under 
Rhodes,  built  their  new  stage,  and  wooed  the  willing 
town. 

There  was  some  irregularity  in  the  first  steps 
made  to  reestablish  the  stage,  which,  after  an  uneasy 
course  of  about  four  years,  was  terminated  by  Charles 
II.,  who,  in  1663,  granted  patents  for  two  theatres, 
aiid  no  more,  in  London.  Under  one  patent,  Killi- 
grew,  at  the  head  of  the  king's  company  (the  Cockpit 
being  closed),  opened  at  the  new  theatre  in  Drury 
Lane,  in  August,  1663,  with  a  play  of  the  olden 
time,  —  the  "  Humourous  Lieutenant,"  of  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher.  Under  the  second  patent,  Davenant 
and  the  Duke  of  York's  company  found  a  home,  — 
first  at  the  old  Cockpit,  then  in  Salisbury  Court, 
Fleet  Street,  the  building  of  which  was  commenced 
in  1660,  on  the  site  of  the  old  granary  of  Salisbury 

55 


56  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

House,  which  had  served  for  a  theatre  in  the  early 
years  of  the  reign  of  Charles  I.  This  little  stage 
was  lapped  up  by  the  great  tongue  of  fire,  by  which 
many  a  nobler  edifice  was  destroyed,  in  1666.  But 
previous  to  the  fire,  thence  went  Davenant  and  the 
duke's  troupe  to  the  old  Tennis  Court,  the  first  of 
the  three  theatres  in  Portugal  Row,  on  the  south 
side  of  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  from  which  the  houses 
took  their  name. 

In  1 67 1,  Davenant  being  dead,  the  company,  under 
the  nominal  management  of  his  widow,  migrated  to 
a  house  designed  by  Wren,  and  decorated  by  Grin- 
ling  Gibbons.  This  was  the  Duke's  Theatre,  in 
Dorset  Gardens.  It  was  in  close  proximity  to  the 
old  Salisbury  Court  Theatre,  and  it  presented  a 
double  face,  —  one  toward  Fleet  Street,  the  other 
overlooking  the  terrace  which  gave  access  to  visitors 
who  came  by  the  river.  Later,  this  company  was 
housed  in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields  again  ;  but  it  migrated, 
in  1732,  to  Covent  Garden,  under  Rich.  Rich's 
house  was  burnt  down  in  1808,  and  its  successor, 
built  by  Smirke,  was  destroyed  in  1856.  On  the 
site  of  the  latter  now  stands  the  Royal  Italian  Opera, 
the  representative,  in  its  way,  of  the  line  of  houses 
wherein  the  duke's  company  struggled  against  their 
competitors  of  the  king's. 

The  first  house  of  those  competitors  in  Drury 
Lane  was  burnt  in  1672,  but  the  king's  company 
took  refuge  in  the  "  Fields  "  till  Wren  built  the  new 
house,  opened  in  1674.  The  two  troupes  remained 
divided,  yet  not  opposed,  each  keeping  to  its  recog- 
nised stock  pieces,  till  1682,  when  Killigrew,  having 
"shuffled  off  this  mortal  coil,"  the  two  companies, 


THE  BOY  ACTRESSES  AND  THE  YOUNG  LADfES    57 

after  due  weeding,  formed  into  one,  and  abandoning 
Lincoln's  Inn  to  the  tennis-players,  Dorset  Gardens 
to  the  wrestlers,  and  both  to  decay,  they  opened  at 
the  New  Driiry,  built  by  Sir  Christopher,  on  the 
1 6th  of  November,  1682,  Wren's  theatre  was  taken 
down  in  1791  ;  its  successor,  built  by  Holland,  was 
opened  in  1794,  and  was  destroyed  in  1809.  The 
present  edifice  is  the  fourth  which  has  occupied  a 
site  in  Drury  Lane.  It  is  the  work  of  Wyatt,  and 
was  opened  in  181 2. 

Thus  much  for  the  edifice  of  the  theatres  of  the 
last  half  of  the  seventeenth  century.  Before  we 
come  to  the  "  ladies  and  gentlemen  "  who  met  upon 
the  respective  stages,  and  strove  for  the  approval 
of  the  town,  let  me  notice  that,  after  the  death  of 
Oliver,  Davenant  publicly  exhibited  a  mixed  enter- 
tainment, chiefly  musical,  but  which  was  not  held 
to  be  an  infringement  of  the  law  against  the  acting 
of  plays.  Early  in  May,  1659,  Evelyn  writes:  "I 
went  to  see  a  new  opera,  after  the  Italian  way,  in 
recitative  music  and  scenes,  much  inferior  to  the 
Italian  composure  and  magnificence ;  but  it  was 
prodigious,  that  in  a  time  of  such  public  consterna- 
tion, such  a  vanity  should  be  kept  up  or  permitted." 
That  these  musical  entertainments  were  something 
quite  apart  from  "plays,"  is  manifest  by  another 
entry  in  Evelyn's  diary,  in  January,  166 1  :  "After 
divers  years  since  I  had  seen  any  play,  I  went  to 
see  acted  'The  Scornful  Lady,'  at  a  new  theatre 
in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields." 

Of  Shakespeare's  brother  Charles,  who  lived  to 
this  period,  Oldys  says  :  "  This  opportunity  made  the 
actors  greedily  inquisitive  into  every  little  circum- 


$8  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

stance,  more  especially  in  Shakespeare's  dramatic 
character,  which  his  brother  could  relate  of  him.  But 
he,  it  seems,  was  so  stricken  in  years,  and  possibly 
his  memory  so  weakened  by  infirmities  (which  might 
make  him  the  easier  pass  for  a  man  of  weak  intel- 
lects), that  he  could  give  them  but  little  light  into 
their  inquiries  ;  and  all  that  could  be  recollected  from 
him  of  his  brother  Will  in  that  station,  was  the  faint, 
general,  and  almost  lost  ideas  he  had  of  having  once 
seen  him  act  a  part  in  one  of  his  own  comedies, 
wherein  being  to  personate  a  decrepit  old  man,  he 
wore  a  long  beard,  and  appeared  so  weak  and  droop- 
ing, and  unable  to  walk,  that  he  was  forced  to  be 
supported  and  carried  by  another  person  to  a  table, 
at  which  he  was  seated  among  some  company  who 
were  eating,  and  one  of  them  sung  a  song."  This 
description  applies  to  old  Adam,  in  "As  You  Like 
It ; "  and  he  who  feebly  shadowed  it  forth  formed 
a  link  which  connected  the  old  theatre  with  the 
new. 

The  principal  actors  in  Killigrew's  company,  from 
which  that  of  Drury  Lane  is  descended,  were  Bate- 
man,  Baxter,  Bird  (Theophilus),  Blagden,  Burt,  Cart- 
wright,  Clun,  Duke,  Hancock,  Hart,  Kynaston,  Lacy, 
Mohun,  the  Shatterels  (William  and  Robert),  and 
Wintersel.  Later  additions  gave  to  this  company 
Beeston,  Bell,  Charleton,  "  Scum  "  Goodman,  Griffin, 
Rains,  Joe  Harris,  Hughes,  LyddoU,  Reeves,  and 
Shirley. 

The  "  ladies  "  were  Mrs.  Corey,  Eastland,  Hughes, 
Knep,  the  Marshalls  (Anne  and  Rebecca),  Rutter, 
Uphill,  whom  Sir  Robert  Howard  too  tardily  married, 
and  Weaver.     Later  engagements  included  those  of 


THE  BOY  ACTRESSES  AND  THE  YOUNG  LADIES    59 

Mrs.  Boutel,  Gwyn  (Nell),  James,  Reeves,  and  Ver- 
juice. These  were  sworn  at  the  lord  chamberlain's 
office  to  serve  the  king.  Of  the  "gentlemen,"  ten 
were  enrolled  on  the  royal  household  establishment, 
and  provided  with  liveries  of  scarlet  cloth  and  silver 
lace.  In  the  warrants  of  the  lord  chamberlain  they 
were  styled  "  Gentlemen  of  the  Great  Chamber ; " 
and  they  might  have  pointed  to  this  fact  as  proof  of 
the  dignity  of  their  profession. 

The  company  first  got  together  by  Rhodes,  subse- 
quently enlarged  by  Davenant,  and  sworn  to  serve 
the  Duke  of  York,  at  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  was  in 
some  respects  superior  to  that  of  Drury  Lane. 
Rhodes's  troupe  included  the  great  Betterton,  Dixon, 
Lilliston,  Lovel,  Nokes  (Robert),  and  six  lads  em- 
ployed to  represent  female  characters,  —  Angel,  Will- 
iam Betterton,  a  brother  of  the  great  actor  (drowned 
early  in  life,  at  Wallingford),  Floid,  Kynaston  (for 
a  time),  Mosely,  and  Nokes  (Janus).  Later,  Davenant 
added  Blagden,  Harris,  Price,  and  Richards  ;  Med- 
boum,  Norris,  Sandford,  Smith,  and  Young.  The 
actresses  were  Mrs.  Davenport,  Davies,  Gibbs, 
Holden,  Jennings,  Long,  and  Saunderson,  whom 
Betterton  shortly  after  married. 

This  new  fashion  of  actresses  was  a  French 
fashion,  and  the  mode  being  imported  from  France, 
a  French  company,  with  women  among  them,  came 
over  to  London.  Hoping  for  the  sanction  of  their 
countrywoman,  Queen  Henrietta  Maria,  they  estab- 
lished themselves  in  Blackfriars.  This  essay  excited 
all  the  fury  of  Prj'nne,  who  called  these  actresses  by 
very  unsavoury  names ;  but  who,  in  styling  them 
"  unwomanish  and  graceless,"  did  not  mean  to  imply 


6o  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

that  they  were  awkward  and  unfeminine,  but  that 
acting  was  unworthy  of  their  sex,  and  unbecoming 
women  born  in  an  era  of  grace. 

"Glad  am  I  to  say,"  remarks  as  stout  a  Puritan  as 
Prynne,  namely,  Thomas  Brand,  in  a  comment  ad- 
dressed to  Laud,  '*  glad  am  I  to  say  they  were  hissed, 
hooted,  and  pippin-pelted  from  the  stage,  so  that  I  do 
not  think  they  will  soon  be  ready  to  try  the  same 
again."  Although  Brand  asserts  "that  all  virtuous 
and  well-disposed  persons  in  this  town"  were  "justly 
offended  "  at  these  women,  "  or  monsters  rather,"  as 
Prynne  calls  them,  "expelled  from  their  own  coun- 
try," adds  Brand,  yet  more  sober-thinking  people  did 
not  fail  to  see  the  propriety  of  Juliet  being  repre- 
sented by  a  girl  rather  than  by  a  boy.  Accordingly, 
we  hear  of  English  actresses  even  before  the  Restora- 
tion, mingled,  however,  with  boys  who  shared  with 
them  that  "line  of  business."  "The  boy's  a  pretty 
actor,"  says  Lady  Strangelove,  in  the  "Court  Beg^- 
gar,"  played  at  the  Cockpit,  in  1632,  "and  his  mother 
can  play  her  part.  The  women  now  are  in  great 
request."  Prynne  groaned  at  the  "  request  "  becom- 
ing general.  "They  have  now,"  he  writes,  in  1633, 
"their  female  players  in  Italy  and  other  foreign 
parts." 

Davenant's  "  Siege  of  Rhodes"  was  privately  acted 
by  amateurs,  including  Matthew  Locke  and  Henry 
Purcell ;  the  parts  of  lanthe  and  Roxalana  were 
played  by  Mrs.  Edward  Coleman  and  another  lady. 
The  piece  is  so  stuffed  with  heroic  deeds,  heroic  love, 
and  heroic  generosity,  that  none  more  suitable  could 
be  found  for  ladies  to  appear  in.  Nevertheless,  when 
Rhodes  was  permitted  to  reopen  the  stage,  he  could 


THE  BOY  ACTRESSES  AND  THE  YOUNG  LADIES   61 

only  assemble  boys  about  him  for  his  Evadnes, 
Aspasias,  and  the  other  heroines  of  ancient  tragedy. 
Now,  the  resumption  of  the  old  practice  of  "  wom- 
en's parts  being  represented  by  men  in  the  habits  of 
women"  gave  offence,  and  this  is  assigned  as  a 
reason  in  the  first  patents,  according  to  Killigrew  and 
Davenant,  why  those  managers  were  authorised  to 
employ  actresses  to  represent  all  female  characters. 
Killigrew  was  the  first  to  avail  himself  of  the  privi- 
lege. It  was  time.  Some  of  Rhodes's  "boys" 
were  men  past  forty,  who  frisked  it  as  wenches  of 
fifteen  ;  even  real  kings  were  kept  waiting  because 
theatrical  queens  had  not  yet  shaved  ;  when  they  did 
appear  they  looked  like  "  the  guard  disguised,"  and 
when  the  prompter  called  "  Desdemona,"  —  "  enter 
giant !  "  Who  the  lady  was  who  first  trod  the  stage 
as  a  professional  actress  is  not  known ;  but  that  she 
belonged  to  Killigrew's  company  is  certain.  The 
character  she  assumed  was  Desdemona,  and  she  was 
introduced  by  a  prologue  written  for  the  occasion  by 
Thomas  Jordan.  It  can  hardly  be  supposed  that  she 
was  too  modest  to  reveal  her  name,  and  that  of  Anne 
Marshall  has  been  suggested,  as  also  that  of  Mar- 
garet Hughes.  On  the  3d  of  January,  1661,  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher's  "  Beggar's  Bush  "  was  performed 
at  Killigrew's  Theatre,  "  it  being  very  well  done," 
says  Pepys,  "  and  here  the  first  time  that  ever  I  saw 
a  woman  come  upon  the  stage."  Davenant  did  not 
bring  forward  his  actresses  before  the  end  of  June, 
166 1,  when  he  produced  the  second  part  of  the 
♦•  Siege  of  Rhodes,"  with  Mrs.  Davenport  as  Roxa- 
lana,  and  Mrs.  Saunderson  as  lanthe ;  both  these 
ladies,  with  Mrs.  Davies  and  Mrs.  Long,  boarded  in 


6fl  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

Davenant's  house.  Killigrew  abused  his  privilege  to 
employ  ladies.  In  1664,  his  comedy,  "The  Parson's 
Wedding,"  wherein  the  plague  is  made  a  comic  inci- 
dent of,  connected  with  unexampled  profligacy,  was 
acted,  "  I  am  told,"  are  Pepys's  own  words,  «•  by 
nothing  but  women,  at  the  King's  House." 

By  this  time  the  vocation  of  the  "  boy  actresses  " 
had  altogether  passed  away  ;  and  there  only  remains 
for  me  to  briefly  trace  the  career  of  those  Old  World 
representatives  of  the  gentle  or  truculent  heroines 
depicted  by  our  early  dramatists. 

There  were  three  members  of  Killigrew' s,  or  the 
king's  company,  who  were  admirable  representatives 
of  female  characters  before  the  Civil  Wars.  These 
were  Hart,  Burt,  and  Clun,  —  all  pupils  of  luckless 
Robinson,  slain  in  fight,  who  was  himself  an  accom- 
plished "actress."  Of  the  three.  Hart  rose  to  the 
greatest  eminence.  His  Dutchess  in  Shirley's  "  Car- 
dinal," was  the  most  successful  of  his  youthful  parts. 
After  the  Restoration,  he  laid  down  Cassio  to  take 
Othello  from  Burt,  by  the  king's  command,  and  was 
as  great  in  the  Moor  as  Betterton,  at  the  other  house, 
was  in  Hamlet.  His  Alexander,  which  he  created, 
always  filled  the  theatre  ;  and  his  dignity  therein  was 
said  to  convey  a  lesson  even  to  kings.  His  Brutus 
was  scarcely  inferior,  while  his  Catiline  was  so  unap- 
proachable, that  when  he  died,  Jonson's  tragedy 
died  with  him.  Ryraer  styles  him  and  Mohun  the 
iEsopus  and  Roscius  of  their  time.  When  they 
acted  together  (Amintor  and  Melantius)  in  the 
"  Maid's  Tragedy,"  the  town  asked  no  greater  treat. 
Hart  was  one  of  Pepys's  prime  favourites.  He  was 
a  man  whose  presence  delighted  the  eye  before  his 


THE  BOY  ACTRESSES  AND  THE  YOUNG  LADIES    63 

accents  enchanted  the  ear.  The  humblest  character 
entrusted  to  him  was  distinguished  by  his  careful 
study.  On  the  stage  he  acknowledged  no  audience ; 
their  warmest  applause  could  never  draw  him  into 
a  moment's  forgetfulness  of  his  assumed  character. 
In  Manly,  "The  Plain  Dealer,"  as  in  Catiline,  he 
never  found  a  successor  who  could  equal  him.  His 
salary  was,  at  the  most,  jC^  a  week,  but  he  is  said  to 
have  realised  ;^  1,000  yearly,  after  he  became  a  share- 
holder in  the  theatre.  He  finally  retired  in  1682, 
on  a  pension  amounting  to  half  his  salary,  which  he 
enjoyed,  however,  scarcely  a  year.  He  died  of  a 
painful  inward  complaint  in  1683,  and  was  buried  at 
Stanmore  Magna. 

There  is  a  tradition  that  Hart,  Mohun,  and  Better- 
ton  fought  on  the  king's  side  at  Edgehill,  in  1642. 
The  last  named  was  then  a  child,  and  some  things 
are  attributed  to  Charles  Hart  which  belonged  to  his 
father.  If  Charles  was  but  eighteen  when  his  name- 
sake the  king  returned  in  1660,  it  must  have  been 
his  father  who  was  at  Edgehill  with  Mohun,  and  who, 
perhaps,  played  female  characters  m  his  early  days. 

Burt,  after  he  left  off  the  women's  gear,  acted 
Cicero  with  rare  ability,  in  "  Catiline,"  for  the  gettmg 
up  of  which  piece  Charles  II.  contributed  .1^500  for 
robes.  Of  Clun,  in  or  out  of  petticoats,  the  record  is 
brief.  His  lago  was  superior  to  Mohun' s,  but  Lacy 
excelled  him  in  the  "  Humourous  Lieutenant ; "  but  as 
Subtle,  in  the  "  Alchymist,"  he  was  the  admiration  of 
all  playgoers.  After  acting  this  comic  part,  Clun 
made  a  tragic  end  on  the  night  of  the  3d  of  Au- 
gust, 1664.  With  a  lady  hanging  on  his  arm,  and 
some  liquor  lying  under  his  belt,  he  was  gaily  passing 


64  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

on  his  way  to  his  country  lodgings  in  Kentish  Town, 
where  he  was  assailed,  murdered,  and  flung  into  a 
ditch,  by  rogues,  one  of  whom  was  captured,  **  an  Irish 
fellow  most  cruelly  butchered  and  bound."  "The 
house  will  have  a  great  miss  of  him,"  is  the  epitaph 
of  Pepys  upon  versatile  Clun. 

Of  the  boys  belonging  to  Davenant's  company, 
who  at  first  appeared  in  woman's  bodice,  but  soon 
found  their  occupation  gone,  some  were  of  greater 
fame  than  others.  One  of  these.  Angel,  turned  from 
waiting-maids  to  low  comedy,  caricatured  Frenchmen 
and  foolish  lords.  We  hear  nothing  of  him  after 
1673.  The  younger  Betterton,  as  I  have  said,  was 
drowned  at  Wallingford.  Mosely  and  Floid  repre- 
sented a  vulgar  class  of  women,  and  both  died  before 
the  year  1674  ;  but  Kynaston  and  James  Nokes  long 
survived  to  occupy  prominent  positions  on  the  stage. 

Kynaston  made  "the  loveliest  lady,"  for  a  boy, 
ever  beheld  by  Pepys.  This  was  in  1660,  when 
Kynaston  played  Olympia,  the  duke's  sister,  in  the 
"  Loyal  Subject ; "  and  went  with  a  young  fellow 
actor  to  carouse,  after  the  play,  with  Pepys  and  Cap- 
tain Ferrers.  Kynaston  was  a  handsome  fellow  under 
every  guise.  On  the  7th  of  January,  1661,  says 
Pepys,  "  Tom  and  I,  and  my  wife,  went  to  the  thea- 
tre, and  there  saw  *  The  Silent  Woman.' "  Among 
other  things  here,  Kynaston,  the  boy,  had  the  good 
turn  to  appear  in  three  shapes :  "  First,  as  a  poor 
woman,  in  ordinary  clothes,  to  please  morose;  then, 
in  fine  clothes  as  a  gallant  —  and  in  them  was  clearly 
the  prettiest  woman  in  the  whole  house ;  and  lastly, 
as  a  man  —  and  then  likewise  did  appear  the  hand- 
somest man  in  the  house."      When  the  play  wa^ 


THE  BOY  ACTRESSES  AND  THE  YOUNG  LADIES    65 

concluded,  and  it  was  not  the  lad's  humour  to  carouse 
with  the  men,  the  ladies  would  seize  on  him,  in  his 
theatrical  dress,  and  carrying  him  to  Hyde  Park  in 
their  coaches,  be  foolishly  proud  of  the  precious 
freight  which  they  bore  with  them. 

Kynaston  was  not  invariably  in  such  good  luck. 
There  was  another  handsome  man,  Sir  Charles  Sedley, 
whose  style  of  dress  the  young  actor  aped ;  and  his 
presumption  was  punished  by  a  ruffian,  hired  by  the 
baronet,  who  accosted  Kynaston  in  St.  James's  Park, 
as  "  Sir  Charles,"  and  thrashed  him  in  that  character. 
The  actor  then  mimicked  Sir  Charles  on  the  stage. 
A  consequence  was,  that  on  the  30th  of  January, 
1669,  Kynaston  was  waylaid  by  three  or  four  assail- 
ants, and  so  clubbed  by  them  that  there  was  no  play 
on  the  following  evening ;  and  the  victim,  mightily 
bruised,  was  forced  to  keep  his  bed.  He  did  not 
recover  in  less  than  a  week.  On  the  9th  of  Febru- 
ary he  reappeared,  as  the  King  of  Tidore,  in  the 
"Island  Princess,"  which  "he  do  act  very  well,"  says 
Pepys,  "after  his  beating  by  Sir  Charles  Sedley 's 
appointment." 

The  boy  who  used  to  play  Evadne,  and  now  enacted 
the  tyrants  of  the  drama,  retained  a  certain  beauty  to 
the  last.  "  Even  at  past  sixty,"  Cibber  tells  us,  "his 
teeth  were  all  sound,  white,  and  even  as  one  would 
wish  to  see  in  a  reigning  toast  of  twenty."  Colley 
attributes  the  formal  gravity  of  Kynaston's  mien  "to 
the  stately  step  he  had  been  so  early  confined  to  in  a 
female  decency."  The  same  writer  praises  Kynas- 
ton's Leon,  in  "  Rule  a  Wife  and  Have  a  Wife,"  for 
its  determined  manliness  and  honest  authority.  In 
the  heroic  tyrants,  his  piercing  eye,  his  quick,  impel- 


66  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

uous  tone,  and  the  fierce,  lion-like  majesty  of  his  bear- 
ing and  utterance,  "gave  the  spectator  a  kind  of 
trembling  admiration." 

When  Cibber  played  Syphax,  in  "  Cato,"  he  did 
it  as  he  thought  Kynaston  would  have  done,  had  he 
been  alive  to  impersonate  the  character.  Kynaston 
roared  through  the  bombast  of  some  of  the  dramatists 
with  a  laughable  earnestness ;  but  in  Shakespeare's 
monarchs  he  was  every  inch  a  king  —  dignified  and 
natural.  The  true  majesty  of  his  Henry  IV.  was  so 
manifest  that  when  he  whispered  to  Hotspur,  "  Send 
us  your  prisoners,  or  you'll  hear  of  it,"  he  conveyed, 
says  Cibber,  "  a  more  terrible  menace  in  it  than  the 
loudest  intemperance  of  voice  could  swell  to."  Again, 
in  the  interview  between  the  dying  king  and  his  son, 
the  dignity,  majestic  grief,  the  paternal  affection,  the 
injured,  kingly  feeling,  the  pathos  and  the  justness  of 
the  rebuke,  were  alike  remarkable.  The  actor  was 
equal  to  the  task  assigned  him  by  the  author,  —  put- 
ting forth  "  that  peculiar  and  becoming  grace,  which 
the  best  writer  cannot  inspire  into  any  actor  that  is 
not  born  with  it." 

Kynaston  remained  on  the  stage  from  1659  to 
1699.  By  this  time  his  memory  began  to  fail  and 
his  spirit  to  leave  him.  These  imperfections,  says 
the  generous  Colley,  "  were  visibly  not  his  own,  but 
the  effects  of  decaying  nature."  But  Betterton's 
nature  was  not  thus  decaying;  and  his  labour  had 
been  far  greater  than  that  of  Kynaston,  who  created 
only  a  score  of  original  characters,  the  best  known  of 
which  are,  Harcourt,  in  the  '*  Country  Wife  ; "  Free- 
man, in  the  "  Plain  Dealer ; "  and  Count  Baldwin,  in 
"  Isabella,  or  the  Fatal  Marriage."    His  early  practice, 


THE  BOY  ACTRESSES  AND  THE  YOUNG  LADIES    67 

in  representing  female  characters,  affected  his  voice  in 
some  disagreeable  way.  "  What  makes  you  feel 
sick  ?  "  said  Kynaston  to  Powell  —  suffering  from  a 
too  riotous  "last  night."  "How  can  I  feel  other- 
wise," asked  Powell,  "when  I  hear  your  voice.?" 

Edward  Kynaston  died  in  171 2,  and  lies  buried  in 
the  churchyard  of  St.  Paul's,  Covent  Garden.  If  not 
the  greatest  actor  of  his  day,  Kynaston  was  the  great- 
est of  the  "boy  actresses."  So  exalted  was  his  rep- 
utation, "  that,"  says  Downes,  "  it  has  since  been 
disputable  among  the  judicious,  whether  any  woman 
that  succeeded  him  so  sensibly  touched  the  audience 
as  he." 

In  one  respect  he  was  more  successful  than  Better- 
ton,  for  he  not  only  made  a  fortune,  but  kept  what 
he  had  made,  and  left  it  to  his  only  son.  This  son 
improved  the  bequest  by  his  industry,  as  a  mercer  in 
Covent  Garden  ;  and,  probably  remembering  that  he 
was  well  descended  from  the  Kynastons  of  Oteley, 
Salop,  he  sent  his  own  son  to  college,  and  lived  to 
see  him  ordained.  This  Reverend  Mr.  Kynaston  pur- 
chased the  impropriation  of  Aldgate  ;  and,  despite 
the  vocations  of  his  father  and  grandfather,  but  in 
consequence  of  the  prudence  and  liberality  of  both, 
was  willingly  acknowledged  by  his  Shropshire  kins- 
men. 

Kynaston's  contemporary,  James  Nokes,  was  as 
prudent  and  as  fortunate  as  he ;  but  James  was  not 
so  well  descended.  His  father  (and  he  himself  for  a 
time)  was  a  city  toyman  —  not  so  well-to-do,  but  he 
allowed  his  sons  to  go  on  the  stage,  where  Robert 
was  a  respectable  actor,  and  James,  after  a  brief  exer- 
cise of  female  characters,  was  admirable  in  his  pecul- 


68  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

iar  line.  The  toyman's  son  became  a  landholder, 
and  made  of  his  nephew  a  lord  of  the  soil.  Thus, 
even  in  those  days  of  small  salaries,  players  could 
build  up  fortunes ;  because  the  more  prudent  among 
them  nursed  the  little  they  could  spare,  with  care, 
and  of  that  little  made  the  very  utmost. 

Nokes  was,  to  the  last  night  of  his  career,  famous 
for  his  impersonation  of  the  nurse  in  two  plays ;  first, 
in  that  strange  adaptation  by  Otway,  of  "  Romeo  and 
Juliet "  to  a  Roman  tragedy,  "  Caius  Marius ; "  and 
secondly,  in  Nevil  Payne's  fierce,  yet  not  bombastic 
drama,  "  Fatal  Jealousy."  Of  the  portraits  to  be 
found  in  Gibber's  gallery,  one  of  the  most  perfect, 
drawn  by  Colley's  hand,  is  that  of  James  Nokes. 
Gibber  attributes  his  general  excellence  to  "a  plain 
and  palpable  simplicity  of  nature,  which  was  so  utterly 
his  own,  that  he  was  often  as  accountably  diverting 
in  his  common  speech  as  on  the  stage."  His  very 
conversation  was  an  unctuous  acting ;  and,  in  the 
truest  sense  of  the  word,  he  was  "  inimitable."  Gibber 
himself,  accomplished  mimic  as  he  was,  confessedly 
failed  in  every  attempt  to  reproduce  the  voice  and 
manner  of  James  Nokes,  who  identified  himself  with 
every  part  so  easily,  as  to  reap  a  vast  amount  of  fame 
at  the  cost  of  hardly  an  hour's  study.  His  range  was 
through  the  entire  realm  of  broad  comedy,  and  Gib- 
ber thus  photographs  him  for  the  entertainment  of 
posterity : 

"  He  scarce  ever  made  his  first  entrance  in  a  play 
but  he  was  received  with  an  involuntary  applause ; 
not  of  hands  only,  for  those  may  be,  and  have  often 
been,  partially  prostituted  and  bespoken,  but  by  a 
general  laughter,  which  the  very  sight  of  him  pro- 


THE  BOY  ACTRESSES  AND  THE  YOUNG  LADIES    69 

voiced,  and  nature  could  not  resist ;  yet  the  louder 
the  laugh,  the  graver  was  his  look  upon  it ;  and  sure 
the  ridiculous  solemnity  of  his  features  was  enough 
to  have  set  a  whole  bench  of  bishops  into  a  titter, 
could  he  have  been  honoured  (may  it  be  no  offence  to 
suppose  it)  with  such  grave  and  right  reverend  audi- 
tors. In  the  ludicrous  distresses  which,  by  the  laws 
of  comedy,  folly  is  often  involved  in,  he  sunk  into 
such  a  mixture  of  piteous  pusillanimity,  and  a  con- 
sternation so  ruefully  ridiculous  and  inconsolable,  that 
when  he  had  shook  you  to  a  fatigue  of  laughter, 
it  became  a  moot  point  whether  you  ought  not  to 
have  pitied  him.  When  he  debated  any  matter  by 
himself,  he  would  shut  up  his  mouth  with  a  dumb, 
studious  pout,  and  roll  his  full  eye  into  such  a  vacant 
amazement,  such  a  palpable  ignorance  of  what  to  think 
of  it,  that  his  silent  perplexity  (which  would  some- 
times hold  him  several  minutes)  gave  your  imagina- 
tion as  full  content  as  the  most  absurd  thing  he  could 
say  open  it." 

This  great  comic  actor  was  naturally  of  a  grave  and 
sober  countenance  ;  "  but  the  moment  he  spoke,  the 
settled  seriousness  of  his  features  was  utterly  dis- 
charged, and  a  dry,  drolling,  or  laughing  levity  took 
such  full  possession  of  him,  that  I  can  only  refer  the 
idea  of  him  to  your  imagination."  His  clear  and 
audible  voice  better  fitted  him  for  burlesque  heroes, 
like  Jupiter  Ammon,  than  his  middle  stature ;  but 
the  pompous  inanity  of  his  travestied  pagan  divinity 
was  as  wonderful  as  the  rich  stolidity  of  his  con- 
tentedly ignorant  fools. 

There  was  no  actor  whom  the  city  so  rejoiced  in 
as  Nokes ;  there  was  none  whom  the  court  more 


70  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

delighted  to  honour.  In  May,  1670,  Charles  II.,  and 
troops  of  courtiers,  went  down  to  Dover  to  meet  the 
queen-mother,  and  took  with  them  the  Lincoln's  Inn 
Fields  comedians.  When  Henrietta  Maria  arrived, 
with  her  suite  of  French  ladies  and  gentlemen,  the 
latter  attired,  according  to  the  prevailing  fashion, 
in  very  short  blue  or  scarlet  laced  coats,  with  broad 
sword-belts,  the  English  comedians  played  before  the 
royal  host  and  his  guests  the  play  founded  on  Moli^re's 
"ficole  des  Femmes,"  and  called  "Sir  Solomon." 
Nokes  acted  Sir  Arthur  Addel,  in  dressing  for  which 
part  he  was  assisted  by  the  Duke  of  Monmouth. 
In  order  that  he  might  the  better  ape  the  French 
mode,  the  duke  took  off  his  own  sword  and  belt,  and 
buckled  them  to  the  actor's  side.  At  his  first  en- 
trance on  the  stage,  king  and  court  broke  into  unex- 
tinguishable  laughter,  so  admirably  were  the  foreign 
guests  caricatured  ;  at  which  outrage  on  courtesy  and 
hospitality,  the  guests,  naturally  enough,  "were  much 
chagrined,"  says  Downes.  Nokes  retained  the  duke's 
sword  and  belt  to  his  dying  day,  which  fell  in  the 
course  of  the  year  1692.  He  was  the  original  repre- 
sentative of  about  forty  characters,  in  plays  which 
have  long  since  disappeared  from  the  stage.  Charles 
II.  was  the  first  who  recognised,  on  the  occasion  of 
his  playing  the  part  of  Norfolk,  in  "  Henry  VIII.," 
the  merit  of  Nokes  as  an  actor. 

James  Nokes  left  to  his  nephew  something  better 
than  the  sword  and  belt  of  the  Duke  of  Monmouth, 
namely,  a  landed  estate  at  Totteridge,  near  Barnet, 
of  the  value  of  j£400  a  year.  Pepys  may  have 
kissed  that  nephew's  mother,  on  the  August  day  of 
1665,  when  he  fell  into  company  near  Rochester  with 


THE  BOY  ACTRESSES  AND  THE  YOUNG  LADIES    71 

a  lady  and  gentleman  riding  singly,  and  differing  as 
to  the  merits  of  a  copy  of  verses,  which  Pepys,  by 
his  style  of  reading  aloud,  got  the  husband  to  con- 
fess that  they  were  as  excellent  as  the  wife  had 
pronounced  them  to  be.  "His  name  is  Nokes," 
writes  the  diarist,  "over  against  Bow  Church.  .  .  . 
We  promised  to  meet,  if  ever  we  come  both  to  Lon- 
don again,  and  at  parting,  I  had  a  fair  salute  on 
horseback,  in  Rochester  streets,  of  the  lady." 

Having  thus  seen  the  curtain  fall  upon  the  once 
"boy  actresses,"  I  proceed  to  briefly  notice  the 
principal  ladies  in  the  respective  companies  of  Killi- 
grew  and  Davenant,  commencing  with  those  of  the 
King's  House,  or  Theatre  Royal,  under  Killigrew's 
management,  chiefly  in  Drury  Lane.  The  first  name 
of  importance  in  this  list  is  that  of  Mrs.  Hughes, 
who,  on  the  stage  from  1663  to  1676,  was  more 
remarkable  for  her  beauty  than  for  her  great  ability. 
When  the  former,  in  1668,  subdued  Prince  Rupert, 
there  was  more  jubilee  at  the  court  of  Charles  H., 
at  Tunbridge  Wells,  than  if  .the  philosophic  prince  had 
fallen  upon  an  invention  that  should  benefit  mankind. 
Rupert,  whom  the  plumed  gallants  of  Whitehall  con- 
sidered as  a  rude  mechanic,  left  his  laboratory,  put 
aside  his  reserve,  and  wooed  in  due  form  the  proudest, 
perhaps,  of  the  actresses  of  her  day.  Only  in  the 
May  of  that  year  Pepys  had  saluted  her  with  a  kiss, 
in  the  greenroom  of  the  King's  House.  She  was 
then  reputed  to  be  the  intimate  friend  and  favourite 
of  Sir  Charles  Sedley;  "A  mighty  pretty  woman," 
says  Pepys,  "and  seems,  but  is  not,  modest."  The 
prince  enshrined  the  frail  beauty  in  that  home  of  Sir 
Nicholas  Crispe,  at  Hammersmith,  which  was  subse- 


72  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

quently  occupied  by  Bubb  Dodington,  the  Margra- 
vine of  Anspach,  and  Queen  Caroline  of  Brunswick. 
She  well-nigh  ruined  her  lover,  at  whose  death  there 
was  little  left  beside  a  collection  of  jewels,  worth 
jC20,ooo,  which  were  disposed  of  by  lottery,  in  order 
to  pay  his  debts.  Mrs.  Hughes  was  not  unlike  her 
own  Mrs.  Moneylove  in  "Tom  Essence,"  a  very 
good  sort  of  person  till  temptation  beset  her.  After 
his  death  she  squandered  much  of  the  estate  which 
Rupert  had  left  to  her,  chiefly  by  gambling.  Her 
contemporary,  Nell  Gwyn,  purchased  a  celebrated 
pearl  necklace  belonging  to  the  deceased  prince  for 
;£4,520,  a  purchase  which  must  have  taken  the 
appearance  of  an  insult,  in  the  eyes  of  Mrs.  Hughes. 
The  daughter  of  this  union,  Ruperta,  who  shared 
with  her  mother  the  modest  estate  bequeathed  by 
the  prince,  married  General  Emanuel  Scrope  Howe. 
One  of  the  daughters  of  this  marriage  was  the 
beautiful  and  reckless  maid  of  honour  to  Caroline, 
Princess  of  Wales,  whom  the  treachery  of  Nanty 
Lowther  sent  broken-hearted  to  the  grave,  in  1726. 
Through  Ruperta,  however,  the  blood  of  her  par- 
ents is  still  continued  in  the  family  of  Sir  Edward 
Bromley. 

Mrs.  Knipp  (or  Knep)  was  a  different  being  from 
Margaret  Hughes.  She  was  a  pretty  creature,  with 
a  sweet  voice,  a  mad  humour,  and  an  ill-looking, 
moody,  jealous  husband,  who  vexed  the  soul  and 
bruised  the  body  of  his  sprightly,  sweet-toned  and 
wayward  wife.  Excellent  company  she  was  found  by 
Pepys  and  his  friends,  whatever  her  horse-jockey  of 
a  husband  may  have  thought  of  her,  or  Mrs.  Pepys 
of  the  philandering  of  her  own  husband  with  the 


THE  BOY  ACTRESSES  AND  THE  YOUNG  LADIES    73 

minx,  whom  she  did  not  hesitate  to  pronounce  a 
"wench,"  and  whom  Pepys  himself  speaks  of  affec- 
tionately as  a  "jade"  he  was  always  glad  to  see. 
Abroad  he  walks  with  her  in  the  New  Exchange  to 
look  for  pretty  faces ;  and  of  the  home  of  an  actress, 
in  1666,  we  have  a  sketch  in  the  record  of  a  visit  in 
November,  "To  Knipp's  lodgings,  whom  I  find  not 
ready  to  go  home  with  me  ;  and  there  stayed  reading 
of  Waller's  verses,  while  she  finished  dressing,  her 
husband  being  by.  Her  lodging  very  mean,  and  the 
condition  she  lives  in ;  yet  makes  a  show  without 
doors,  God  bless  us  ! " 

Mrs.  Knipp's  characters  embraced  the  rakish  fine 
ladies,  the  rattling  ladies' -maids,  one  or  two  tragic 
parts ;  and  where  singing  was  required,  priestesses, 
nuns,  and  milkmaids.  As  one  of  the  latter,  Pepys 
was  enchanted  at  her  appearance,  with  her  hair 
simply  turned  up  in  a  knot  behind. 

Her  intelligence  was  very  great,  her  simple  style 
of  dressing  much  commended  ;  and  she  could  deliver 
a  prologue  as  deftly  as  she  could  either  sing  or 
dance,  and  with  as  much  grace  as  she  was  wont  to 
throw  into  manifestations  of  touching  grief  or  tender- 
ness. She  disappears  from  the  bills  in  1678,  after 
a  fourteen  years'  service ;  and  there  is  no  further 
record  of  the  life  of  Mistress  Knipp. 

Anne  and  Rebecca  Marshall  are  names  which  one 
can  only  reluctantly  associate  with  that  of  Stephen 
Marshall,  the  divine,  who  is  said  to  have  been  their 
father.  The  Long  Parliament  frequently  commanded 
the  eloquent  incumbent  of  Finchingfield,  Essex,  to 
preach  before  them.  Cambridge  University  was  as 
proud  of  him  as  a  distinguished  alumnus,  as  Hunting- 


74  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

donshire  was  of  having  him  for  a  son.  In  affairs  of 
religion  he  was  the  oracle  of  Parliament,  and  his 
advice  was  sought  even  in  political  difficulties.  He 
was  a  mild  and  conscientious  man,  of  whom  Baxter 
remarked,  that  "if  all  the  bishops  had  been  of  the 
spirit  and  temper  of  Usher,  the  Presbyterians  of 
the  temper  of  Mr.  Marshall,  and  the  independents 
like  Mr.  Burroughs,  the  divisions  of  the  Church 
would  have  been  easily  compromised."  Stephen 
Marshall  was  a  man  who,  in  his  practice,  "  preached 
his  sermons  o'er  again  ;  "  and  Firmin  describes  him 
as  an  "  example  to  the  believers  in  word,  in  conversa- 
tion, in  charity,  in  faith,  and  in  purity,"  He  died 
full  of  honours  and  understanding  ;  and  Westminster 
Abbey  afforded  him  a  grave,  from  which  he  was 
ruthlessly  ejected  at  the  Restoration.  It  is  hardly 
possible  to  believe  that  such  a  saint  was  the  father 
of  the  two  beautiful  actresses  whom  Nell  Gwyn 
taunted  with  being  the  erring  daughters  of  a  "pray- 
ing Presbyterian." 

On  the  other  hand,  we  learn  from  Sir  Peter  Leices- 
ter's "  History  of  Cheshire,"  that  the  royalist,  Lord 
Gerard  of  Bromley,  retained  this  staunch  Presby- 
terian in  his  house  as  his  chaplain.  Further,  we 
are  told  that  this  chaplain  married  a  certain  illegiti- 
mate Elizabeth,  whose  father  was  a  Button  of 
Button,  and  that  of  this  marriage  came  Anne  and 
Rebecca.  As  Sir  Peter  was  himself  connected  with 
both  the  Gerards  and  Buttons  by  marriage,  he  must 
be  held  as  speaking  with  some  authority  in  this 
matter. 

Pepys  says  of  Anne  Marshall,  that  her  voice  was 
"not  so  sweet  as  lanthe's,"  meaning  Mrs.  Betterton's. 


THE  BOY  ACTRESSES  AND  THE  YOUNG  LADIES    75 

Rebecca  had  a  beautiful  hand,  was  very  imposing  on 
the  stage,  and  even  off  of  it  was  "  mighty  fine,  pretty, 
and  noble."  She  had  the  reputation  of  facilitating  the 
intrigue  which  Lady  Castlemaine  kept  up  with  Hart, 
the  actor,  to  avenge  herself  on  the  king  because 
of  his  admiration  for  Mrs.  Davies.  One  of  her  finest 
parts  was  Dorothea,  in  the  "  Virgin  Martyr ; "  and 
her  Queen  of  Sicily  (an  "  ui>-hill "  part)  to  Nell 
Gwyn's  Florimel,  in  Dryden's  "Secret  Love,"  was 
highly  appreciated  by  the  playgoing  public. 

With  the  exception  of  Mrs.  Corey,  the  mimic,  and 
pleasing  little  Mrs.  Boutel,  who  realised  a  fortune, 
with  her  girlish  voice  and  manner,  and  her  supremely 
innocent  and  fascinating  ways,  justifying  the  inten- 
sity of  love  with  which  she  inspired  youthful  heroes, 
the  only  other  actress  of  the  king's  company  worth 
mentioning  is  Nell  Gwyn ;  but  Nell  was  the  crown 
of  them  all,  winning  hearts  throughout  her  jubilant 
career,  beginning  in  her  early  girlhood  with  that  of  a 
link-boy,  and  ending  in  her  womanhood  with  that  of 
the  king. 

Nell  Gwyn  is  claimed  by  the  Herefordshire  people. 
In  Hereford  city,  a  mean  house  in  the  rear  of  the 
Oak  Inn  is  pointed  out  as  the  place  of  her  birth. 
The  gossips  there  little  thought  that  a  child  so  hum- 
bly bom  would  be  the  mother  of  a  line  of  dukes,  or 
that  her  great-grandson  should  be  the  bishop  of  her 
native  town,  and  occupy  for  forty  years  the  episcopal 
palace  in  close  proximity  to  the  poor  cottage  in 
which  the  archest  of  hussies  first  saw  the  light. 

But  the  claims  of  Pipe  Lane,  Hereford,  are  dis- 
puted by  Coal  Yard,  Drury  Lane,  and  also  by  Ox- 
ford; wher^  Nell's  father,  James  Gwyn,  a  "captain," 


7*  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

according  to  some,  a  fruiterer,  according  to  others, 
died  in  prison.  The  captain,  with  his  wife  Helena, 
somewhile  a  resident  in  St.  Martin's  Lane,  had  two 
daughters,  Nell  and  Rose.  The  latter  married  a 
Captain  Capels,  and,  secondly,  a  Mr.  Foster ;  little 
else  is  known  of  her,  save  that  her  less  reputable  sis- 
ter left  her  a  small  legacy,  and  that  she  survived  till 
the  year  1697.  Nelly  was  born  early  in  1650;  and 
tradition  states  that  she  very  early  ran  away  from  her 
country  home  to  town,  and  studied  for  the  stage  by 
going  every  night  to  the  play.  I  suspect  Coal  Yard 
was  her  first  bower,  that  thence  she  issued  to  cry 
*'  fresh  herrings ! "  and  captivate  the  hearts  of  sus- 
ceptible link-boys ;  and  passed,  from  being  bander 
of  strong  waters  to  the  gentlemen  who  patronised 
Madame  Ross's  house,  to  taking  her  place  in  the  pit, 
with  her  back  to  the  orchestra,  and  selling  oranges 
and  pippins,  with  pertinent  wit  gratis,  to  liberal  fops 
who  would  buy  the  first  and  return  the  second  with 
interest.  As  Rochester  assures  us,  there  was  a 
"wondering  pit"  in  presence  of  this  smartest  and 
most  audacious  of  orange-girls.  It  was  natural 
enough  that  she  should  attract  the  notice  of  the 
actors,  that  Lacy  should  give  her  instruction,  and 
that  from  Charles  Hart  she  should  take  that  and  all 
the  love  he  could  pay  her.  The  latter  two  were 
spoken  of  in  prologues,  long  after  both  were  dead,  as 
"those  darlings  of  the  stage." 

Under  the  auspices  of  Charles  Hart,  Nelly  made 
her  first  appearance  at  the  (king's)  theatre,  in  a  seri- 
ous part,  Cydaria,  in  the  "Indian  Emperor."  She 
was  then  not  more  than  fifteen,  though  some  say 
seventeen,  years  of  age.     For  tragedy  she  was  un- 


ttiia.  BOV  ACTRESSES  AND  THE  YOUNG  LAt)IE§    77 

fitted  :  her  stature  was  low,  though  her  figure  was 
graceful ;  and  it  was  not  till  she  assumed  comic  char- 
acters, stamped  the  smallest  foot  in  England  on  the 
boards,  and  laughed  with  that  peculiar  laugh  that,  in 
the  excess  of  it,  her  eyes  almost  disappeared,  she 
fairly  carried  away  the  town,  and  enslaved  the  hearts 
of  city  and  of  court.  She  spoke  prologues  and  epi- 
logues with  wonderful  effect,  danced  to  perfection, 
and  in  her  peculiar  but  not  extensive  line  was,  per- 
haps, unequalled  for  the  natural  feeling  which  she 
put  into  the  parts  most  suited  to  her.  She  was  so 
fierce  of  repartee  that  no  one  ventured  a  second  time 
to  allude  sneeringly  to  her  antecedents.  She  was 
coarse,  too,  when  the  humour  took  her ;  could  curse 
pretty  strongly  if  the  house  was  not  full,  and  was 
given,  in  common  with  the  other  ladies  of  the  com- 
pany, to  loll  about  and  talk  loudly  in  the  public 
boxes,  when  she  was  not  engaged  on  the  stage. 
She  left  both  stage  and  boxes  for  a  time,  in  1667,  to 
keep  mad  house  at  Epsom  with  the  clever  Lord  Buck- 
hurst  —  a  man  who  for  one  youthful  vice  exhibited  a 
thousand  manly  virtues.  The  story,  that  Lord  Buck- 
hurst  separated  from  Mistress  Gwyn  for  a  money 
consideration  and  a  title,  can  be  disproved  by  the 
testimony  of  a  character  which  all  Peru  could  not 
have  influenced,  and  of  chronology,  which  sets  the 
story  at  naught. 

They  who  would  read  Buckhurst's  true  character, 
will  find  it  in  the  eloquent  and  graceful  dedication 
which  Prior  made  of  his  poems  to  Buckhurst's  son, 
Lionel.  Like  the  first  Sackville,  of  the  line  of  the 
Earls  of  Dorset,  he  was  himself  a  poet ;  and  "To  all 
you  ladies  now  on  land,"  although  not  quite  the  im- 


78  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

promptu  it  is  said  to  have  been,  is  an  evidence  how 
gracefully  he  could  strike  the  lyre  on  the  eve  of  a 
great  battle.  In  short,  Buckhurst,  who  took  Nelly 
from  the  stage,  and  who  found  Prior  in  a  coffee-shop 
and  added,  him  to  Hterature,  was  a  "man,"  brave, 
truthful,  gay,  honest,  and  universally  beloved.  He 
was  the  people's  favourite  ;  and  Pope  assures  us,  when 
Buckhurst  had  become  Earl  of  Dorset,  that  he  was 
"the  grace  of  courts,  the  muses'  pride." 

After  a  year's  absence.  Mistress  Gwyn  returned  to 
the  stage.  In  all  nature,  there  was  nothing  better 
than  she,  in  certain  parts.  Pepys  never  hoped  to 
see  anything  like  her  in  Florimel,  with  her  changes 
of  sex  and  costume.  She  was  little,  pretty,  and 
witty;  danced  perfectly,  and  with  such  applause, 
that  authors  would  fain  have  appropriated  the  appro- 
bation bestowed  on  her  "  jig  "  to  the  play  in  which  it 
was  introduced.  A  play,  without  Nell,  was  no  play 
at  all  to  Mr.  Pepys.  When,  in  1667,  she  followed 
Buckhurst  to  Epsom,  and  flung  up  her  parts  and  an 
honestly  earned  salary  for  a  poor  £iooa.ye?Lr,  Pepys 
exclaims,  "  Poor  girl !  I  pity  her ;  but  more  the  loss 
of  her  at  the  King's  House."  The  admiralty  clerk's 
admiration  was  confined  to  her  merry  characters ;  he 
speaks  of  her  Emperor's  Daughter,  in  the  "Indian 
Emperor,"  as  "a  great  and  serious  part,  which  she 
does  most  basely." 

Her  own  party  hailed  her  return  ;  but  she  did  not 
light  upon  a  bed  of  roses.  Lady  Castlemaine  was 
no  longer  her  patroness  —  rather  that  and  more  of 
Nelly's  old  lover,  Charles  Hart,  who  flouted  the  ex- 
favourite  of  Buckhurst.  The  ex-favourite,  however, 
bore  with  equal  indifiference  the  scorn  of  Charles 


THE  BOY  ACTRESSES  AND  THE  YOUNG  LADIES    79 

Hart  and  the  contempt  of  Charles  Sackville ;  she 
saw  compensation  for  both,  in  the  royal  homage  of 
Charles  Stuart.  Meanwhile  she  continued  to  enchant 
the  town  in  comedy,  to  "  spoil "  serious  parts  in  Sir 
Robert  Howard's  mixed  pieces,  and  yet  to  act  with 
great  success  characters  in  which  natural  emotion, 
bordering  on  insanity,  was  to  be  represented.  Early 
in  1668,  we  find  her  among  the  loose  companions  of 
King  Charles ;  "  and  I  am  sorry  for  it,"  says  Pepys, 
"and  can  hope  for  no  good  to  the  state,  from  having 
a  prince  so  devoted  to  his  pleasure."  The  writers  for 
the  stage  were  of  a  like  opinion.  Howard  wrote  his 
"  Duke  of  Lerma,"  as  a  vehicle  of  reproof  to  the 
king,  who  sat,  a  careless  auditor,  less  troubled  than 
Pepys  himself,  who  expected  that  the  play  would  be 
interrupted  by  royal  authority.  The  last  of  her 
original  characters  was  that  of  Almahide,  in  Dry- 
den's  "Conquest  of  Granada,"  the  prologue  to  which 
she  spoke  in  a  straw  hat  as  broad  as  a  cartwheel,  and 
thereby  almost  killed  the  king  with  laughter.  In 
this  piece,  her  old  lover.  Hart,  played  Almanzor ; 
and  his  position  with  respect  to  King  Boabdelin 
(Kynaston)  and  Almahide  (Nelly)  corresponds  with 
that  in  which  he  stood  toward  King  Charles  and 
the  actress.  The  passages  reminding  the  audience 
of  this  complex  circumstance  threw  the  house  into 
"  convulsions." 

From  this  time,  Ellen  Gwyn  disappears  from  the 
stage.  A  similar  surname  appears  in  the  playbills 
from  1670  to  1682;  but  there  is  no  ground  for  be- 
lieving that  the  "  Madame  Gwyn  "  of  the  later  period 
was  the  Mrs.  Ellen  of  the  earlier,  poorer,  and  merrier 
times.     Nelly's  first  son,  Charles  Beauclerc,  was  bom 


8e  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

in  her  house  in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  in  May,  1 670 ; 
her  second,  in  the  following  year,  at  her  house  in 
Pall  Mall,  the  garden  terrace  of  which  overlooked 
the  then  green  walk  in  the  park,  from  which  Evelyn 
saw,  with  shame,  the  king  talking  with  the  impudent 
"comedian."  This  younger  son,  James,  died  at  Paris, 
1680.  The  elder  had  Otway  for  a  tutor.  In  his 
sixth  year  he  was  created  Earl  of  Burford,  and  in 
his  fourteenth  was  created  a  duke.  His  mother  had 
addressed  him,  in  the  king's  hearing,  by  an  epithet 
referring  to  his  illegitimacy,  on  the  plea  that  she  did 
not  know  by  what  title  to  call  him.  Charles  made 
him  an  earl.  Accident  of  death  raised  him  to  a  duke- 
dom. Harry  Jermyn,  Earl  of  St.  Albans,  of  whom 
report  made  the  second  husband  of  Henrietta  Maria, 
had  just  died.  Blind  as  he  had  been,  he  had^  played 
cards  to  the  last  —  some  one  sitting  near  him  to  tell 
him  the  points.  At  an  age  approaching  to  ninety 
years,  he  had  passed  away.  Charles  gave  the  name 
of  St.  Albans,  with  the  title  of  duke,  to  Nell  Gwyn's 
eldest  son,  adding  thereto  the  registrarship  of  the 
High  Court  of  Chancery,  and  the  office  (rendered 
hereditary)'  of  Master  Falconer  of  England.  The 
present  and  tenth  Duke  of  St.  Albans  is  the  lineal 
descendant  of  Charles  Stuart  and  Ellen  Gwyn. 

The  king  had  demurred  to  a  request  to  settle  ;^500 
a  year  on  this  lady,  and  yet  within  four  years  she  is 
known  to  have  exacted  from  him  above  ;^6o,ooo. 
Subsequently,  ;^6,ooo,  annually,  were  tossed  to  her 
from  the  Excise,  —  that  hardest  taxation  of  the  poor, 
—  and  ;^3,ooo  more  were  added  for  the  expenses  of 
each  son.  She  blazed  publicly  at  Whitehall,  with 
diamonds  outflashing  those  usually  worn,  as  Evelyn 


THE  BOY  ACTRESSES  AND  THE  YOUNG  LADIES    8i 

has  it,  "by  the  like  cattle."  At  Burford  House, 
Windsor,  her  gorgeous  country  residence,  she  could 
gaily  lose  ;^  1,400  in  one  night  at  basset,  and  pur- 
chase diamond  necklaces  the  next  day,  at  fabulous 
prices.  Negligently  dressed  as  she  was,  she  always 
looked  fasctnating ;  and  fascinating  as  she  was,  she 
had  a  ready  fierceness  and  a  bitter  sarcasm  at  hand, 
when  other  royal  favourites,  or  sons  of  favourites, 
assailed  or  sneered  at  her.  With  the  king  and  his 
brother  she  bandied  jokes  as  freely  as  De  Pompadour 
or  Du  Barry  with  Louis  XV.  By  impulse,  she 
could  be  charitable ;  but  by  neglecting  the  claims  of 
her  own  creditors,  she  could  be  cruel.  Charles 
alluded  to  her  extravagance  when,  on  his  death-bed, 
he  recommended  those  shameless  women,  Cleveland 
and  Portsmouth,  to  his  brother's  kindness,  and  hoped 
he  would  "not  let  Nelly  starve."  An  apocryphal 
story  attributes  the  founding  of  Chelsea  Hospital  to 
Nelly's  tenderness  for  a  poor  old  wounded  soldier 
who  had  been  cheated  of  his  pay.  The  dedications 
to  her  of  books  by  such  people  as  Aphra  Behn  and 
Duffett  are  blasphemous  in  their  expressions,  making 
of  her,  as  they  do,  a  sort  of  divine  essence,  and  be- 
coming satirical  by  their  exaggerated  and  disgusting 
eulogy.  For  such  a  person,  the  pure  and  pious 
Bishop  Kenn  was  once  called  upon  to  yield  up  an 
apartment  in  which  he  lodged,  and  the  peerage  had 
a  narrow  escape  of  having  her  foisted  upon  it  as 
Countess  of  Greenwich.  This  clever  actress  died  in 
November,  1687,  o^  ^  fit  of  apoplexy,  by  which  she 
had  been  stricken  in  the  previous  March.  She  was 
then  in  her  thirty-eighth  year.  She  had  been  en- 
dowed like  a  princess,  but  she  left  debts  and  died 


82  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

just  in  time  to  allow  James  to  discharge  them  out  of 
the  public  purse.  Finally,  she  was  carried  to  old  St, 
Martin's  in  the  Fields  to  be  buried,  and  Tennison 
preached  her  funeral  sermon.  When  this  was  subse- 
quently made  the  ground  of  exposing  him  to  the 
reproof  of  Queen  Mary,  she  remarked  that  the  good 
doctor,  no  doubt,  had  said  nothing  but  what  the  facts 
authorised. 

In  the  time  of  Nelly's  most  brilliant  fortunes,  the 
people  who  laughed  at  her  wit  and  impudence  pub- 
licly contemned  her.  In  February,  1680,  she  visited 
the  Duke's  Theatre,  in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  on 
which  occasion  a  person  in  the  pit  called  her  loudly 
by  a  name  which,  to  do  her  justice,  she  never  repu- 
diated. The  affront,  which  she  herself  could  laugh 
at,  was  taken  up  by  Thomas  Herbert,  brother  of 
Philip,  Earl  of  Pembroke,  who  had  married  the 
younger  sister  of  another  of  the  king's  favourites, 
Henrietta  de  Querouaille.  The  audience  took  part, 
some  with  the  assailant,  others  with  the  champion 
of  Nelly.  Many  swords  were  drawn,  the  sorrows  of 
the  "  Orphan  "  were  suspended,  there  was  a  hubbub 
in  the  house,  and  more  scratches  given  than  blood 
spilt.  That  Nelly  found  a  knight  in  Thomas  Herbert 
only  proves  that  a  hot-headed  young  gentleman  may 
become  a  very  sage  as  years  grow  upon  him.  This 
Thomas,  when  Earl  of  Pembroke,  was  "  first  plenipo- 
tentiary" at  the  making  of  the  treaty  of  Ryswick, 
and  chief  commissioner  in  establishing  the  union  of 
England  and  Scotland.  His  excellent  taste  and  lib- 
erality laid  the  foundations  of  the  collection  of  antiques 
which  yet  attracts  visitors  to  Wilton.  But  love  for 
leading  playhouse  factions  did  not  die  out  in  his  fam- 


THE  BOY  ACTRESSES  AND  THE  YOUNG  LADIES    83 

ily.  Four  and  forty  years  after  he  had  drawn  sword 
for  the  reputation  of  Nell  Gwyn,  his  third  countess, 
Mary,  sister  of  Viscount  Howe,  headed  the  Cuzzoni 
party  at  the  Opera  House  against  the  Faustina  fac- 
tion, led  by  the  Countess  of  Burlington  and  Lady 
Delawar.  Whenever  Faustina  opened  her  mouth 
to  sing,  Lady  Pembroke  and  her  friends  hissed  the 
singer  heartily ;  and  as  soon  as  Cuzzoni  made  a  similar 
attempt,  Lady  Burlington  and  her  followers  shrieked 
her  into  silence.  Lord  Pembroke  sat  by,  thinking, 
perhaps,  of  the  young  days  when  he  was  the 
champion  of  Nell  Gwyn,  or  of  Margaret  Symcott,  if 
an  old  tradition  be  true  that  such  was  Nelly's  real 
name. 

Of  the  ladies  who  played  at  the  Duke's  House, 
under  Davenant,  the  principal  were  Mrs.  Davenport, 
Mrs.  Davies,  Mrs.  Gibbs,  Mrs.  Holden,  Mrs.  Jen- 
nings, Mrs.  Long,  and  Mrs.  Norris.  Chief  among 
these  were  Mistresses  Davenport,  Davies,  Saunder- 
son,  and  Long.  Mrs.  Davenport  is  remembered  as 
the  Roxalana  of  Davenant's  "Siege  of  Rhodes," 
which  she  played  so  well  that  Pepys  could  not  forget 
her  in  either  of  her  successors,  Mrs.  Betterton  or 
Mrs.  Norton,  She  is  still  better  remembered  in 
connection  with  a  story  of  which  she  is  the  heroine, 
although  that  character  in  it  has  been  ascribed  to 
others. 

Aubrey  de  Vere,  the  twentieth  Earl  of  Oxford,  was 
the  last  of  his  house  who  held  that  title,  but  the  one 
who  held  it  the  longest,  namely,  seventy  years,  from 
1632  to  1702.  Aubrey  de  Vere  despised  the  old 
maxim,  "Noblesse  oblige."  He  lived  a  roystering 
life,  kept  a  roystering  house,  and  was  addicted  to 


^4  THEIR  MAJESTIES*  SERVANTS 

hard  drinking,  rough  words,  and  unseemly  brawling 
and  sword-slashing,  in  his  cups.  The  young  earl 
made  love,  after  the  fashion  of  the  day  and  the  man, 
to  Mrs.  Davenport ;  but  he  might  as  well  have  made 
love  to  Diana ;  and  it  was  not  till  he  proposed  mar- 
riage that  the  actress  condescended  to  listen  to  his 
suit.  The  lovers  were  privately  married,  and  the  lady 
was,  in  the  words  of  old  Downes,  "  erept  the  stage." 
The  honeymoon,  however,  was  speedily  obscured; 
Lord  Oxford  grew  indifferent  and  brutal.  When  the 
lady  talked  of  her  rights,  he  informed  her  that  she 
was  not  Countess  of  Oxford  at  all.  The  apparent 
reverend  gentleman  who  had  performed  the  ceremony 
of  marriage  was  a  trumpeter,  who  served  under  this 
very  noble  lord  in  the  king's  own  regiment  of  cavalry. 
The  forlorn  fair  one,  after  threatening  suicide,  sought 
out  the  king,  fell  at  his  feet,  and  demanded  justice. 
The  award  was  made  in  the  shape  of  an  annuity  of 
;^300  a  year,  with  which  "  Lord  Oxford's  Miss,"  as 
Evelyn  calls  her,  seems  to  have  been  satisfied  and 
consoled ;  for  Pepys,  soon  after,  being  at  the  play, 
"saw  the  old  Roxalana  in  the  chief  box,  in  a  velvet 
gown,  as  the  fashion  is,  and  very  handsome,  at  which 
I  was  glad." 

As  for  Miss  Mary  Davies,  it  is  uncertain  whether 
she  was  the  daughter  of  a  Wiltshire  blacksmith,  or 
the  less  legitimate  offspring  of  Thomas  Howard,  the 
first  Earl  of  Berkshire,  or  of  the  earl's  son,  —  not 
the  poet,  but  the  colonel.  However  this  may  be, 
Mary  Davies  was  early  on  the  stage,  where  she 
danced  well,  played  moderately  ill,  announced  the 
next  afternoon's  performance  with  grace,  and  won  an 
infamous  distinction  at  the  king's  hands,  by  her  inim- 


THE  BOY  ACTRESSES  AND  THE  YOUNG  LADIES    S5 

itable  singing  of  the  old  song  of  "  My  lodging  is  on 
the  cold  ground."  Then  there  was  the  public  fur- 
nishing of  a  house  for  her,  and  the  presentation  of  a 
ring  worth  £600,  and  much  scandal  to  good  men 
and  honest  women.  Thereupon  Miss  Davies  grew 
an  "impertinent  slut,"  and  my  Lady  Castlemaine 
waxed  melancholy,  and  meditated  mischief  against 
her  royal  and  fickle  lover.  The  patient  queen  her- 
self was  moved  to  anger  by  the  new  position  of  Miss 
Davies,  and  when  the  latter  appeared  in  a  play  at 
Whitehall,  in  which  she  was  about  to  dance,  her 
Majesty  rose,  and  left  the  house.  But  neither  the 
offended  dignity  of  the  queen,  nor  Lady  Castlemaine 
"looking  fire,"  nor  the  bad  practical  jokes  of  Nell 
Gwyn,  could  loose  the  king  from  the  temporary  en- 
chantment to  which  he  surrendered  himself.  Their 
daughter  was  that  Mary  Tudor  who  married  the  second 
Earl  of  Derwentwater,  whose  son,  the  third  earl,  was 
the  gallan):  young  fellow  who  lost  his  head  for  aid 
afforded  to  his  cousin,  the  first  Pretender,  in  171 5. 
Before  his  death,  a  request  was  made  to  the  Duke  of 
Richmond,  son  of  Charles  II.  by  Mile,  de  Querouaille, 
to  present  a  memorial  to  the  lords  in  order  to  save  the 
young  earl's  life.  The  duke  presented  the  memorial, 
but  he  added  his  earnest  hope  that  their  lordships 
would  reject  the  prayer  of  it !  In  such  wise  did  the 
illegitimate  Stuarts  play  brother  to  each  other! 
Through  the  marriage  of  the  daughter  of  Lord  Der- 
wentwater  with  the  eighth  Lord  Petre,  the  blood  of 
the  Stuart  and  of  Moll  Davies  still  runs  in  their  lineal 
descendant,  the  present  and  twelfth  lord. 

Happy  are   the  women  who   have   no   histories ! 
Such  is  the  case  with  Miss  Saunderson,  better  known 


86  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

to  US  as  Mrs.  Betterton.  For  about  thirty  years  she 
played  the  chief  female  characters,  especially  in 
Shakespeare's  plays,  with  great  success.  She  cre- 
ated as  many  new  parts  as  she  played  years ;  but 
they  were  in  old-world  pieces,  which  have  been  long 
forgotten.  In  the  home  which  she  kept  with  her 
husband,  charity,  hospitality,  and  dignity  abided.  So 
unexceptional  was  Mrs.  Betterson's  character,  that 
when  Crowne's  "  Calista  "  was  to  be  played  at  court 
in  1674,  she  was  chosen  to  be  instructress  to  the 
Lady  Mary  and  the  Lady  Anne.  These  princesses 
derived  from  Mrs.  Betterton's  lessons  the  accomplish- 
ment for  which  both  were  distinguished  when  queens, 
of  pronouncing  speeches  from  the  throne  in  a  distinct 
and  clear  voice,  with  sweetness  of  intonation,  and 
grace  of  enunciation.  Mrs.  Betterton  subsequently 
instructed  the  Princess  Anne  in  the  part  of  Semandra, 
and  her  husband  did  the  like  office  for  the  young 
noblemen  who  also  played  in  Lee's  rattling  tragedy 
of  "Mithridates,"  Two  individuals,  better  qualified 
by  their  professional  skill  and  their  moral  character 
to  instruct  the  young  princesses  and  courtiers,  and  to 
exercise  over  them  a  wholesome  authority,  could 
not  then  have  been  found  on  or  off  the  stage. 
After  Betterton's  death.  Queen  Anne  settled  on 
her  old  teacher  of  elocution  a  pension  of  ;^500  a 
year. 

Of  the  remainder  of  the  actresses  who  first 
joined  Davenant,  there  is  nothing  recorded,  except 
their  greater  or  less  efficiency.  Of  Mrs.  Holden, 
Betterton's  kinswoman,  the  only  incident  that  I  can 
recall  to  mind  is,  that  once,  by  the  accidental  mis- 
pronunciation of  a  word,  when  playing  in  "Romeo 


THE  BOY  ACTRESSES  AND  THE  YOUNG  LADIES    87 

and  Juliet,"  and  giving  it  "  a  vehement  action,  it  put 
the  house  into  such  a  laughter,  that  London  Bridge 
at  low  water  was  silence  to  it ! "  Under  its  echoes 
let  us  pass  to  the  "gentlemen  of  the  king's  com- 
pany." 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE    GENTLEMEN    OF    THE    KING's    COMPANY 

Of  the  king's  company,  under  Killigrew,  Hart, 
Burt,  and  Clun  have  already  been  noticed  as  players 
who  commenced  their  career  by  acting  female  parts. 
Of  the  other  early  members  of  this  troupe,  the  first 
names  of  importance  are  those  of  Lacy,  and  little 
Major  Mohun,  the  low  comedian  and  the  high  tra- 
gedian. Of  those  who  precede  them  alphabetically, 
but  little  remains  on  record.  We  only  know  of  The- 
ophilus  Bird,  that  he  broke  his  leg  when  dancing  in 
Suckling's  "  Aglaura,"  probably  when  the  poet 
changed  his  tragedy,  in  which  the  characters  killed 
each  other,  into  a  sort  of  comedy,  in  which  they  all 
survived.  Cartwright,  on  the  other  hand,  has  left  a 
lasting  memorial.  If  you  would  see  how  the  kind 
old  fellow  looked,  go  down  to  Dulwich  College  — 
that  grand  institution  for  which  actors  have  done  so 
much  and  which  has  done  so  little ,  for  actors  —  and 
gaze  on  his  portrait  there.  It  is  the  picture  of  a 
man  who  bequeathed  his  books,  pictures,  and  fur- 
niture, to  the  college  which  Alley n,  another  actor, 
had  founded.  In  early  life,  Cartwright  had  been  a 
bookseller,  at  the  corner  of  Turnstile,  Holborn  ;  and 
in  his  second  vocation  his  great  character  was  Falstaff. 

Lacy  was  a  great  Falstaff,  too ;  and  his  portrait,  a 
W 


THE  GENTLEMEN  OF  THE  KING'S  COMPANY       89 

triple  one  painted  by  Wright  and  etched  by  Hopkins, 
one  of  the  Princess  EUzabeth's  pages,  is  familiarly 
known  to  Hampton  Court  visitors.  Lacy  had  been 
first  a  dancing-master,  then  a  lieutenant  in  the  army, 
before  he  tried  the  stage.  In  his  day  he  had  no 
equal ;  and  his  admirers  denied  that  the  day  to  come 
would  ever  see  his  equal.  Lacy  was  handsome,  both 
in  shape  and  feature,  and  is  to  be  remembered  as  the 
original  performer  of  Teague,  in  the  "  Committee  ;  " 
a  play  of  Howard's,  subsequently  cut  down  to  the 
farce  of  "Killing,  no  Murder."  And  eight  years 
later  (1671),  taught  by  Buckingham,  and  mimicking 
Dryden,  he  startled  the  town  with  that  immortal 
Bayes,  in  the  "  Rehearsal ;  "  a  part  so  full  of  happy 
opportunities  that  it  was  coveted  or  essayed  for  many 
years,  not  only  by  every  great  actor,  whatever  his 
line,  but  by  many  an  actress,  too ;  and,  last  of  all,  by 
William  Farren,  in  18 19. 

There  was  nothing  within  the  bounds  of  comedy 
that  Lacy  could  not  act  well.  Evelyn  styles  him 
"  Roscius,"  Frenchman,  or  Scot,  or  Irishman,  fine 
gentleman  or  fool,  rogue  or  honest  simpleton,  Tar- 
tuffe  or  Drench,  old  man  or  loquacious  woman,  —  in 
all.  Lacy  was  the  delight  of  the  town  for  about  a 
score  of  years.  The  king  ejected  the  best  players 
from  parts,  considered  almost  as  their  property,  and 
assigned  them  to  Lacy.  His  wardrobe  was  a  spec- 
tacle of  itself,  and  gentlemen  of  leisure  and  curiosity 
went  to  see  it.  He  took  a  positive  enjoyment  in 
parts  which  enabled  him  to  rail  at  the  rascalities  of 
courtiers.  Sometimes  this  Aristophanic  license  went 
too  far.  In  Howard's  "  Silent  Woman,"  the  sar- 
casms reached  the  king,  and  moved  his  Majesty  to 


90  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

wrath,  and  to  locking  up  Lacy  himself  in  the  Porter's 
Lodge.  After  a  few  days'  detention  he  was  released  ; 
whereupon  Howard,  meeting  him  behind  the  scenes, 
congratulated  him.  Lacy,  still  ill  in  temper,  abused 
the  poet  for  the  nonsense  he  had  put  into  the  part  of 
Captain  Otter,  which  was  the  cause  of  all  the  mis- 
chief. Lacy  further  told  Howard,  he  was  "more  a 
fool  than  a  poet."  Thereat,  the  honourable  Edward, 
raising  his  glove,  smote  Lacy  smartly  with  it  over 
the  face.  Jack  Lacy  retaliated,  by  lifting  his  cane 
and  letting  it  descend  quite  as  smartly  on  the  pate  of 
a  man  who  was  cousin  to  an  earl.  Ordinary  men 
marvelled  that  the  honourable  Edward  did  not  run 
Jack  through  the  body.  On  the  contrary,  without 
laying  hand  to  hilt,  Howard  hastened  to  the  king, 
lodged  his  complaint,  and  the  house  was  thereupon 
ordered  to  be  closed.  Thus,  many  starved  for  the 
indiscretion  of  one ;  but  the  gentry  rejoiced  at  the 
silencing  of  the  company,  as  those  clever  fellows 
and  their  fair  mates  were  growing,  as  that  gentry 
thought,  "  too  insolent." 

Lacy,  soon  after,  was  said  to  be  dying,  and  al- 
together so  ill-disposed  as  to  have  refused  ghostly 
advice  at  the  hands  of  "  a  bishop,  an  old  acquaintance 
of  his,"  says  Pepys,  "  who  went  to  see  him."  Who 
could  this  bishop  have  been,  who  was  the  old  ac- 
quaintance of  the  ex-dancing-master  and  lieutenant .? 
Herbert  Croft,  or  Seth  Ward.?  —  or  Isaac  Barrow, 
of  Sodor-and-Man,  whose  father,  the  mercer,  had 
lived  near  the  father  of  Betterton  }  But,  whoever 
he  may  have  been,  the  king's  favour  restored  the 
actor  to  health  ;  and  he  remained  Charles's  favourite 
comedian  till  his  death,  in  1 68 1 . 


THE  GENTLEMEN  OF  THE  KING'S  COMPANY      91 

When  Lacy's  posthumous  comedy,  "  Sir  Hercules 
Buffoon,"  was  produced  in  1684,  the  man  with  the 
longest  and  crookedest  nose,  and  the  most  wayward 
wit  in  England,  —  Tom  Durfey,  —  furnished  the  pro- 
logue. In  that  piece  he  designated  Lacy  as  the 
standard  of  true  comedy.  If  the  play  does  not  take, 
said  Lively  Tom,  — 

•'  all  that  we  can  say  on't 
Is,  we've  his  fiddle,  but  not  his  hands  to  play  on't !  " 

Genest,  a  critic  not  very  hard  to  please,  says 
that  Lacy's  friends  should  have  "buried  his  fiddle 
with  him." 

Michael  Mohun  is  the  pleasantest  and,  perhaps, 
the  greatest  name  on  the  roll  of  the  king's  company. 
When  the  players  offended  the  king,  Mohun  was 
the  peacemaker. 

One  cannot  look  on  Mohun's  portrait,  at  Knowle, 
without  a  certain  mingling  of  pleasure  and  respect. 
That  long-haired  young  fellow  wears  so  frank  an 
aspect,  and  the  hand  rests  on  the  sword  so  delicately 
yet  so  firmly !  He  is  the  very  man  who  might  "  rage 
like  Cethegus,  or  like  Cassius  die."  Lee  could  never 
willingly  write  a  play  without  a  part  for  Mohun,  who, 
with  Hart,  was  accounted  among  the  good  actors 
that  procured  profitable  "  third  days "  for  authors. 
No  Maximin  could  defy  the  gods  as  he  did ;  and 
there  has  been  no  franker  Clytus  since  the  day  he 
originally  represented  the  character  in  "Alexander 
the  Great."  In  some  parts  he  contested  the  palm 
with  Betterton,  whose  versatility  he  rivalled,  creating 
one  year  Abdelmelich,  in  another  Dapperwit,  in  a 
third  Pinchwife,  and  then  a  succession  of  classical 


9»  THEIR   MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

heroes  and  modern  rakes  or  simpletons.  Such  an 
actor  had  many  imitators,  but,  in  his  pecuHar  line, 
few  could  rival  a  man  who  was  said  to  speak  as 
Shakespeare  wrote,  and  whom  nature  had  formed 
for  a  nation's  delight.  The  author  of  the  epilogue  to 
"  Love  in  the  Dark "  (that  bustling  piece  of  Sir 
Francis  Fane's,  from  the  *'  Scrutinio "  in  which, 
played  by  Lacy,  Mrs.  Centlivre  derived  her  Marplot) 
illustrates  the  success  of  Mohun's  imitators  by  an 
allusion  to  the  gout  from  which  he  suffered  : 

"  Those  blades  indeed,  but  cripples  in  their  art, — 
Mimic  his  foot,  but  not  his  speaking  part." 

Of  his  modesty,  I  know  no  better  trait  than  what 
passed  when  Nat.  Lee  had  read  to  him  a  part  which 
Mohun  was  to  fill  in  one  of  Lee's  tragedies.  The 
major  put  aside  the  manuscript,  in  a  sort  of  despair  — 
♦*  Unless  I  could  play  the  character  as  beautifully  as 
you  read  it,"  said  he,  **  it  were  vain  to  try  it  at  all !  " 

Such  is  the  brief  record  of  a  great  actor,  one  who 
before  our  civil  jars  was  a  young  player,  during  the 
civil  wars  was  a  good  soldier,  and  in  the  last  years  of 
Charles  II.  was  an  old  and  a  great  actor  still.  Of  the 
other  original  members  of  the  Theatre  Royal,  there 
is  not  much  to  be  said.  Wintershell,  who  died  in 
1679,  merits,  however,  a  word.  He  was  distin- 
guished, whether  wearing  the  sock  or  the  buskin, 
majestic  in  loftily  toned  kings,  and  absurd  in  sillily 
amorous  knights.  Downes  has  praised  him  as  su- 
perior to  Nokes,  in  at  least  one  part,  and  his  Slender 
has  won  eulogy  from  so  stern  a  critic  as  Dennis. 

Among  the  men  who  subsequently  joined  the 
Theatre  Royal,  there  were  some  good  actors,  and  a 


THE  GENTLEMEN  OF  THE  KING'S  COMPANY       93 

few  great  rogues.  Of  these,  the  best  actor  and  the 
greatest  rogue  was  Cardell  Goodman,  or  Scum 
Goodman,  as  he  was  designated  by  his  enemies.  His 
career  on  the  stage  lasted  from  1677,  as  Polyperchon, 
in  Lee's  "  Rival  Queens,"  to  1688.  His  most  popular 
parts  were  Julius  Caesar  and  Alexander.  He  came 
to  the  theatre  hot  from  a  fray  at  Cambridge  Univer- 
sity, whence  he  had  been  expelled  for  cutting  and 
slashing  the  portrait  of  that  exemplary  chancellor, 
the  Duke  of  Monmouth. 

This  rogue's  salary  must  have  been  small,  for  he 
and  Griffin  shared  the  same  bed  in  their  modest 
lodging,  and  having  but  one  shirt  between  them,  wore 
it  each  in  his  turn.  The  only  dissension  which  ever 
occurred  between  them  was  caused  by  Goodman,  who, 
having  to  pay  a  visit  to  a  lady,  clapped  on  the  shirt 
when  it  was  clean,  and  Griffin's  day  for  wearing  it ! 

For  restricted  means,  however,  every  gentleman  of 
of  spirit,  in  those  days,  had  a  resource,  if  he  chose  to 
avail  himself  of  it.  The  resource  was  the  road,  and 
Cardell  Goodman  took  to  it  with  alacrity.  But  he 
came  to  grief,  and  found  himself  with  gyves  on  in 
Newgate ;  yet  he  escaped  the  cart,  the  rope,  and 
Tyburn.  King  James  gave  "  his  Majesty's  servant  " 
his  life,  and  Cardell  returned  to  the  stage  —  a  hero. 

A  middle-aged  duchess,  fond  of  heroes,  adopted 
him  as  a  lover,  and  Cardell  Goodman  had  fine  quar- 
ters, rich  feeding,  and  a  dainty  wardrobe,  all  at  the 
cost  of  his  mistress,  the  ex-favourite  of  a  king,  Bar- 
bara, the  Duchess  of  Cleveland.  Scum  Goodman 
was  proud  of  his  splendid  degradation,  and  paid  such 
homage  to  "my  duchess,"  as  the  impudent  fellow 
called  her,  that  when  he  expected  her  presence  in  the 


94  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

theatre,  he  would  not  go  on  the  stage,  though  king 
and  queen  were  kept  waiting,  till  he  heard  that  "  his 
duchess  "  was  in  the  house.  For  her,  he  played  the 
mad  scene  in  Alexander  with  double  vigour,  and 
cared  for  no  other  applause  so  long  as  her  Grace's 
fan  signalled  approbation. 

Scum  might  have  had  a  rare,  if  a  rascally,  life,  had 
he  befen  discreet ;  but  he  was  fool  as  well  as  knave. 
A  couple  of  the  duchess's  children,  in  the  duchess's 
house,  annoyed  him,  and  Scum  suborned  a  villainous 
Italian  quack  to  dispose  of  them  by  poison.  A  dis- 
covery, before  the  attempt  was  actually  made,  brought 
Scum  to  trial  for  a  misdemeanour.  He  had  the  luck 
of  his  own  father,  the  devil,  that  he  was  not  tried 
for  murder.  As  it  was,  a  heavy  fine  crippled  him  for 
life.  He  seems,  however,  to  have  hung  about  the 
stage  after  he  withdrew  from  it  as  an  actor.  He 
looked  in  at  rehearsals,  and  seeing  a  likely  lad,  named 
Gibber,  going  through  the  little  part  of  the  Chaplain, 
in  the  "Orphan,"  one  spring  morning  of  1690,  Scum 
loudly  wished  he  might  be  —  what  he  very  much 
deserved  to  be,  if  the  young  fellow  did  not  turn  out 
a  good  actor.  Golley  was  so  delighted  with  the 
earnest  criticism,  that  the  tears  flowed  to  his  eyes. 
At  least,  he  says  so. 

King  James  having  saved  Gardell's  neck,  Goodman, 
out  of  pure  gratitude,  perhaps,  became  a  Tory,  and 
something  more,  when  William  sat  in  the  seat  of  his 
father-in-law.  After  Queen  Mary's  death.  Scum  was 
in  the  Fenwick  and  Charnock  plot  to  kill  the  king. 
When  the  plot  was  discovered,  Scum  was  ready  to 
peach.  As  Fenwick's  life  was  thought,  by  his 
friends,  to,  be  safe  if  Goodman  could  be  bought  off 


THE  GENTLEMEN  OF  THE  KING'S  COMPANY      95 

and  got  out  of  the  way,  the  rogue  was  looked  for,  at 
the  "  Fleece,"  in  Covent  Garden,  famous  for  homi- 
cides, and  at  the  robbers*  and  the  revellers'  den,  the 
"  Dog,"  in  Drury  Lane,  Fenwick's  agent,  O'Bryan, 
erst  soldier  and  highwayman,  now  a  Jacobite  agent, 
found  Scum  at  the  "  Dog,"  and  would  then  and  there 
have  cut  his  throat,  had  not  Scum  consented  to  the 
pleasant  alternative  of  accepting  ;^500  a  year,  and  a 
residence  abroad.  This  to  a  man  who  was  the  first 
forger  of  bank-notes  !  Scum  suddenly  disappeared, 
and  Lord  Manchester,  our  ambassador  in  Paris,  in- 
quired after  him  in  vain.  It  was  impossible  to  say 
whether  the  rogue  died  by  an  avenging  hand,  or 
starvation. 

We  are  better  acquainted  with  the  fate  of  the  last 
of  Scum's  fair  favourites,  the  pretty  Mrs.  Price  of 
Drury  Lane.  This  Ariadne  was  not  disconsolate  for 
her  Theseus.  She  married  "  Charles,  Lord  Ban- 
bury," who  was  not  Lord  Banbury,  for  the  House  of 
Peers  denied  his  claim  to  the  title ;  and  he  was  not 
Mrs.  Price's  husband,  as  he  was  already  married  to  a 
living  lady,  Mrs.  Lester.  Of  this  confusion  in  social 
arrangements  the  world  made  small  account,  although 
the  law  did  pronounce  in  favour  of  Mrs.  Lester, 
without  troubling  itself  to  punish  "my  lord."  The 
judges  pronounced  for  the  latter  lady,  solely  on  the 
ground  that  she  had  had  children,  and  the  actress 
none. 

Joseph  Haines  !  "  Joe,"  with  his  familiars  ;  "  Count 
Haines,"  with  those  who  affected  great  respect,  was 
a  rogue  in  his  way  —  a  merry  rogue,  a  ready  wit,  and 
an  admirable  low  comedian,  from  1672  to  1701.  We 
first  hear  of  him  as  a  quick-witted  lad  at  a  school  in 


96  THEIR   MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

St.  Martin*s-in-the-FieIds,  whence  he  was  sent,  through 
the  liberality  of  some  gentlemen  who  had  remarked 
his  talents,  to  Queen's  College,  Oxford.  There 
Haines  met  with  Williamson,  the  Sir  Joseph  of  after 
days,  distinguished  alike  for  his  scholarship,  his  abili- 
ties as  a  statesman,  the  important  offices  he  held,  and 
the  liberality  with  which  he  dispensed  the  fortune 
which  he  honourably  acquired. 

Williamson  chose  Haines  for  a  friend,  and  made 
him  his  Latin  secretary  when  Williamson  was  ap- 
appointed  secretary  of  state.  If  Haines  could  have 
kept  official  and  state  secrets,  his  own  fortune  would 
now  have  been  founded ;  but  Joe  gossiped  in  joyous 
companies,  and  in  taverns  revealed  the  mysteries  of 
diplomacy.  Williamson  parted  with  his  indiscreet 
"servant,"  but  sent  him  to  recommence  fortune- 
making  at  Cambridge.  Here,  again,  his  waywardness 
ruined  him  for  a  professor.  A  strolling  company  at 
Stourbridge  Fair  seduced  him  from  the  groves  of 
Academus,  and  in  a  short  time  this  foolish  and  clever 
fellow,  light  of  head,  of  heart,  and  of  principle,  was 
the  delight  of  the  Drury  Lane  audiences,  and  the 
favoured  guest  in  the  noblest  society  where  mirth, 
humour,  and  dashing  impudence  were  welcome.' 

In  1673,  his  Sparkish,  in  the  "Country  Wife,"  — 
his  original  character,  —  was  accepted  as  the  type  of 
the  airy  gentleman  of  the  day.  His  acting  on,  and 
his  jokes  off,  the  stage  were  the  themes  in  all  coteries 
and  coffee-houses.  He  was  a  great  practical  jester, 
and  once  engaged  a  simple-minded  clergyman  as 
"Chaplain  to   the   Theatre   Royal,"   and   sent   him 

•  Other  accounts  say  that  he  commenced  his  theatrical  life  early, 
at  the  "  Nursery." 


THE  GENTLEMEN  OF  THE  KING'S  COMPANY      97 

behind  the  scenes,  ringing  a  bell,  and  calling  the 
players  to  prayers !  When  Romanism  was  looking 
up,  under  James  II.,  Haines  had  the  impudence  to 
announce  to  the  convert  Sunderland  —  unworthy  son 
of  Waller's  Sacharissa  —  his  adoption  of  the  king's 
religion,  being  moved  thereto  by  the  Virgin,  who  had 
appeared  to  him  in  a  dream,  saying,  "  Joe,  arise !  " 
This  was  too  much  even  for  Sunderland,  who  drily 
observed  that  "  she  would  have  said  '  Joseph,'  if  only 
out  of  respect  for  her  husband  ! " 

The  rogue  showed  the  value  of  a  "profession," 
which  gave  rise  to  many  pamphlets  as  Dryden's, 
by  subsequently  recanting  —  not  in  the  church,  but 
on  the  stage ;  he  the  while  covered  with  a  sheet, 
holding  a  taper,  and  delivering  some  stupid  rhymes 
—  to  the  very  dullest  of  which  he  had  the  art  of 
giving  wonderful  expression  by  his  accent,  emphasis, 
modulation,  and  felicity  of  application.  The  audience 
that  could  bear  this  recantation-prologue  could  easily 
pardon  the  speaker,  who  would  have  caused  even 
greater  errors  to  have  been  pardoned,  were  it  only 
for  his  wonderful  impersonation  of  Captain  Bluff 
(1693)  in  Congreve's  "Old  Bachelor."  The  self-com- 
placent way  in  which  he  used  to  utter  "  Hannibal 
was  a  very  pretty  fellow  in  his  day,"  was  univer- 
sally imitated,  and  has  made  the  phrase  itself  pro- 
verbial. His  Roger,  in  "  Esop,"  was  another  of  his 
successes,  the  bright  roll  of  which  was  crowned  by 
his  lively,  impudent,  irresistible  Tom  Errand,  in  Far- 
quhar's  "  Constant  Couple,"  —  that  most  triumphant 
comedy  of  a  whole  century. 

The  great  fault  of  Haines  lay  in  the  liberties  which 
he  took  with  the  business  of  the  stage.     He  cared 


98  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

less  to  identify  himself  with  the  characters  he  repre- 
sented than,  through  them,  to  keep  up  a  communica- 
tion with  the  spectators.  When  Hart,  then  manager, 
cast  Joe  for  the  simple  part  of  a  Senator,  in  "  Cati- 
line," in  which  Hart  played  the  hero,  Joe,  in  disgust 
at  his  r61e,  spoiled  Hart's  best  point,  by  sitting  behind 
him,  absurdly  attired,  with  pot  and  pipe  in  hand,  and 
making  grimaces  at  the  grave  actor  of  Catiline  ;  which 
kept  the  house  in  a  roar  of  laughter.  Hart  could  not 
be  provoked  to  forget  his  position,  and  depart  from  his 
character;  but  as  soon  as  he  made  his  exit,  he  sent 
Joe  his  dismissal. 

Joe  Haines,  then,  alternated  between  the  stage  and 
the  houses  of  his  patrons.  "  Vivitur  ingenio,"  the 
stage-motto,  was  also  his  own,  and  he  seems  to  have 
added  to  his  means  by  acting  the  jester's  part  in 
noble  circles.  He  was,  however,  no  mere  "fool." 
Scholars  might  respect  a  "  classic  "  like  Haines,  and 
travelling  lords  gladly  hire  as  a  companion  a  witty 
fellow,  who  knew  two  or  three  living  languages  as 
familiarly  as  he  did  his  own.  With  an  English  peer 
he  once  visited  Paris,  where  Joe  is  said  to  have  got 
imprisoned  for  debt,  incurred  in  the  character,  as- 
sumed by  him,  of  an  English  lord.  After  his  release 
he  returned  to  England,  self-invested  with  the  dignity 
of  "count,"  a  title  not  respected  by  a  couple  of  bail- 
iflfs,  who  arrested  Joseph,  on  Holborn  Hill,  for  a  little 
matter  of  ;^20. 

"  Here  comes  the  carriage  of  my  cousin,  the  Bishop 
of  Ely,"  said  the  unblushing  knave ;  "  let  me  speak 
to  him  ;  I  am  sure  he  will  satisfy  you  in  this  matter." 

Consent  was  given,  and  Haines,  putting  his  head 
in  at  yie  carriage  door,  hastily  informed  the  good 

t  \ 


THE  GENTLEMEN  OF  THE  KING'S  COMPANY      99 

Simon  Patrick  that  "here  were  two  Romanists,  in- 
clined to  become  Protestants,  but  with  yet  some 
scruples  of  conscience." 

"  My  friends,"  said  the  eager  prelate  to  them,  "  if 
you  will  presently  come  to  my  house,  I  will  satisfy 
you  in  this  matter !  "  The  scrupulous  gentlemen 
were  well  content ;  but  when  an  explanation  ensued, 
the  vexed  bishop  paid  the  money  out  of  very  shame, 
and  Joe  and  the  bailiffs  spread  the  story.  They  who 
remembered  how  Haines  played  Lord  Plausible,  in 
the  "  Plain  Dealer,"  were  not  at  all  surprised  at  his 
deceiving  a  bishop  and  a  brace  of  bailiffs. 

Sometimes  his  wit  was  of  a  nicer  quality.  When 
Jeremy  Collier's  book  against  the  stage  was  occupy- 
ing the  public  mind,  a  critic  expressed  his  surprise, 
seeing  that  the  stage  was  a  mender  of  morals.  "  True," 
answered  Joe,  "but  Collier  is  a  mender  of  morals, 
too  ;  and  two  of  a  trade,  you  know,  never  agree  !  " 

Haines  was  the  best  comic  actor,  in  his  peculiar 
line  of  comedy,  during  nearly  thirty  years  that  he 
was  one  of  "their  Majesties'  servants."  He  died  at 
his  house  in  Hart  Street,  Covent  Garden,  then  a 
fashionable  locality,  on  the  4th  of  April,  1701,  and 
was  buried  in  the  gloomy  churchyard  of  the  parish, 
which  has  nothing  to  render  it  bright  but  the  memory 
of  the  poets,  artists,  and  actors  whose  bodies  are  there 
buried  in  peace. 

Let  us  now  consider  the  men  in  Davenant's,  or  the 
duke's  company,  who  acted  occasionally  in  Dorset 
Gardens,  but  mostly  in  Portugal  Row,  Lincoln's  Inn 
Fields.  Gf  these,  the  greatest  actor  was  good 
Thomas  Betterton  —  and  his  merits  claim  a  chapter 
to  himself. 


^6  H 


CHAPTER  V. 

THOMAS    BETTERTON 

The  diaries,  biographies,  journals,  and  traditions 
of  the  time,  will  enable  us,  with  some  little  aid  from 
the  imagination,  not  only  to  see  the  actor,  but  the 
social  aspects  amid  which  he  moved.  By  aid  of  these, 
I  find  that,  on  a  December  night,  1661,  there  is  a 
crowded  house  at  the  theatre  in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields. 
The  play  is  "  Hamlet,"  with  young  Mr.  Betterton, 
who  has  been  two  years  on  the  stage,  in  the  part  of 
the  Dane.  The  Ophelia  is  the  real  object  of  the 
young  fellow's  love,  charming  Mistress  Saunderson. 
Old  ladies  and  gentlemen,  repairing  in  capacious 
coaches  to  this  representation,  remind  one  another 
of  the  lumbering  and  crushing  of  carriages  about  the 
old  playhouse  in  the  Blackfriars,  causing  noisy  tu- 
mults which  drew  indignant  appeals  from  the  Puritan 
housekeepers,  whose  privacy  was  sadly  disturbed. 
But  what  was  the  tumult  there  to  the  scene  on  the 
south  side  of  the  "  Fields,"  when  "  Hamlet,"  with 
Betterton,  as  now,  was  offered  to  the  public !  The 
Jehus  contend  for  place  with  the  eagerness  of  ancient 
Britons  in  a  battle  of  chariots.  And  see,  the  mob 
about  the  pit  doors  have  just  caught  a  bailiff  attempt- 
ing to  arrest  an  honest  playgoer.  They  fasten  the 
official  up  in  a  tub,  and  roll  the  tremblmg  wretch  all 


THOMAS  BETTERTON  loi 

"round  the  square."  They  finish  by  hurling  him 
against  a  carriage,  which  sweeps  from  a  neighbouring 
street  at  full  gallop.  Down  come  the  horses  over 
the  barrelled  baiUft,  with  sounds  of  hideous  ruin  ;  and 
the  young  lady  lying  back  in  the  coach  is  screaming 
like  mad.  This  lady  is  the  dishonest  daughter  of 
brave,  honest,  and  luckless  Viscount  Grandison.  As 
yet,  she  is  only  Mrs.  Palmer ;  next  year  she  will  be 
Countess  of  Castlemaine. 

At  length  the  audience  are  all  safely  housed  and 
eager.  Indifferent  enough,  however,  they  are,  during 
the  opening  scenes.  The  fine  gentlemen  laugh  loudly 
and  comb  their  periwigs  in  the  "  best  rooms."  The 
fops  stand  erect  in  the  boxes  to  show  how  folly  looks 
in  clean  linen ;  and  the  orange  nymphs,  with  their 
costly  entertainment  of  fruit  from  Seville,  giggle  and 
chatter,  as  they  stand  on  the  benches  below,  with 
young  and  old  admirers,  proud  of  being  recognised 
in  the  boxes. 

The  whole  court  of  Denmark  is  before  them ;  but 
not  till  the  words,  "  'Tis  not  alone  my  inky  cloak, 
good  mother,"  fall  from  the  lips  of  Betterton,  is  the 
general  ear  charmed,  or  the  general  tongue  arrested. 
Then,  indeed,  the  vainest  fops  and  pertest  orange- 
girls  look  round  and  listen  too.  The  voice  is  so  low, 
and  sad,  and  sweet ;  the  modulation  so  tender,  the 
dignity  so  natural,  the  grace  so  consummate,  that  all 
yield  themselves  silently  to  the  delicious  enchant- 
ment. "It's  beyond  imagination,"  whispers  Mr. 
Pepys  to  his  neighbour,  who  only  answers  with  a 
long  and  low  drawn  "  Hush  !  " 

I  can  never  look  on  Kneller's  masterly  portrait  of 
this  great  player,  without  envying  those  who  had  the 


102  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

good  fortune  to  see  the  original,  especially  in  Hamlet. 
How  grand  the  head,  how  lofty  the  brow,  what  elo- 
quence and  fire  in  the  eyes,  how  firm  the  mouth,  how 
manly  the  sum  of  all !  How  is  the  whole  audience 
subdued  almost  to  tears,  at  the  mingled  love  and  awe 
which  he  displays  in  presence  of  the  spirit  of  his 
father  !  Some  idea  of  Betterton's  acting  in  this  scene 
may  be  derived  from  Gibber's  description  of  it,  and 
from  that  I  come  to  the  conclusion  that  Betterton 
fulfilled  all  that  Overbury  laid  down  with  regard  to 
what  best  graced  an  actor.  "  Whatsoever  is  com- 
mendable to  the  grave  orator,  is  most  exquisitely 
perfect  in  him ;  for  by  a  full  and  significant  action 
of  body  he  charms  our  attention.  Sit  in  a  full  thea- 
tre, and  you  will  think  you  see  so  many  lines  drawn 
from  the  circumference  of  so  many  ears,  while  the 
actor  is  the  centre."  This  was  especially  the  case 
with  Betterton ;  and  now,  as  Hamlet's  first  soliloquy 
closes,  and  the  charmed  but  silence  audience  "feel 
music's  pulse  in  all  their  arteries,"  Mr.  Pepys  almost 
too  loudly  exclaims  in  his  ecstasy,  "  It's  the  best 
acted  part  ever  done  by  man."^And  the  audience 
think  so,  too  ;  there  is  a  hurricane  of  applause  ;  after 
which  the  fine  gentlemen  renew  their  prattle  with  the 
fine  ladies,  and  the  orange-girls  beset  the  Sir  Fop- 
lings,  and  this  universal  trifling  is  felt  as  a  relief 
after  the  general  emotion. 

Meanwhile,  a  critic  objects  that  young  Mr.  Better- 
ton  is  not  "original,"  and  intimates  that  his  Hamlet 
is  played  by  tradition  come  down  through  Davenant, 
who  had  seen  the  character  acted  by  Taylor,  and  had 
taught  the  boy  to  enact  the  prince  after  the  fashion 
set  by  the  man  who  was  said  to  have  been  instructed 


THOMAS  BETTERTON  103 

by  Shakespeare  himself;  amid  which  Mr.  Pepys  re- 
marks, "  I  only  know  that  Mr.  Betterton  is  the  best 
actor  in  the  world." 

As  Sir  Thomas  Overbury  remarked  of  a  great 
player,  his  voice  was  never  lower  than  the  prompter's 
nor  higher  than  the  foil  and  target.  But  let  us  be 
silent,  here  comes  the  gentle  Ophelia.  The  audience 
generally  took  an  interest  in  this  lady  and  the  royal 
Dane,  for  there  was  not  one  in  the  house  who  was 
ignorant  of  the  love-passages  there  had  been  between 
them,  or  of  the  coming  marriage  by  which  they  were 
to  receive  additional  warrant.  Mistress  Saunderson 
was  a  lady  worthy  of  all  the  homage  here  implied. 
There  was  mind  in  her  acting;  and  she  not  only 
possessed  personal  beauty,  but  also  the  richer  beauty 
of  a  virtuous  life.  They  were  a  well-matched  couple 
on  and  off  the  stage  ;  and  their  mutual  affection  was 
based  on  a  mutual  respect  and  esteem.  People 
thought  of  them  together,  as  inseparable,  and  young 
ladies  wondered  how  Mr.  Betterton  could  play  Mer- 
cutio,  and  leave  Mistress  Saunderson  as  Juliet,  to  be 
adored  by  the  not  ineffective  Mr.  Harris  as  Romeo ! 
The  whole  house,  as  long  as  the  incomparable  pair 
were  on  the  stage,  were  in  a  dream  of  delight. 
Their  grace,  perfection,  good  looks,  the  love  they 
had  so  cunningly  simulated,  and  that  which  they  were 
known  to  mutually  entertain,  formed  the  theme  of  all 
tongues.  In  its  discussion,  the  retiring  audience 
forgot  the  disinterring  of  the  regicides,  and  the 
number  of  men  killed  the  other  day  on  Tower  Hill, 
servants  of  the  French  and  Spanish  ambassadors, 
in  a  bloody  struggle  for  precedency,  which  was 
ultimately  won  by  the  Don ! 


I04  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

Fifty  years  after  these  early  triumphs,  an  aged 
couple  resided  in  one  of  the  best  houses  in  Russell 
Street,  Covent  Garden,  —  the  walls  of  which  were 
covered  with  pictures,  prints,  and  drawings,  selected 
with  taste  and  judgment.  They  were  still  a  hand- 
some pair.  The  venerable  lady,  indeed,  looks  pale 
and  somewhat  saddened.  The  gleam  of  April  sun- 
shine which  penetrates  the  apartment  cannot  win  her 
from  the  fire.  She  is  Mrs.  Betterton,  and  ever  and 
anon  she  looks  with  a  sort  of  proud  sorrow  on 
her  aged  husband.  His  fortune,  nobly  earned,  has 
been  diminished  by  "speculation,"  but  the  means 
whereby  he  achieved  it  are  his  still,  and  Thomas 
Betterton,  in  the  latter  years  of  Queen  Anne,  is  the 
chief  glory  of  the  stage,  even  as  he  was  in  the  first 
year  of  King  Charles.  The  lofty  column,  however, 
is  a  Uttle  shaken.  It  is  not  a  ruin,  but  is  beautiful 
in  its  decay.  Yet  that  it  should  decay  at  all  is  a 
source  of  so  much  tender  anxiety  to  the  actor's  wife 
that  her  senses  suffer  disturbance,  and  there  may  be 
seen  in  her  features  something  of  the  distraught 
Ophelia  of  half  a  century  ago. 

It  is  the  13th  of  April,  1710,  —  his  benefit  night; 
and  the  tears  are  in  the  lady's  eyes,  and  a  painful 
sort  of  smile  on  her  trembling  lips,  for  Betterton 
kisses  her  as  he  goes  forth  that  afternoon  to  take 
leave,  as  it  proved,  of  the  stage  for  ever.  He  is  in 
such  pain  from  gout  that  he  can  scarcely  walk  to  his 
carriage,  and  how  is  he  to  enact  the  noble  and  fiery 
Melantius  in  that  ill-named  drama  of  horror,  "  The 
Maid's  Tragedy  ? "  Hoping  for  the  best,  the  old 
player  is  conveyed  to  the  theatre,  built  by  Sir  John 
Vanbrugh,  in   the  Haymarket,  the  site  of  which  is 


THOMAS  BETTERTON  105 

now  occupied  by  the  "  Opera-house."  Through  the 
stage  door  he  is  carried  in  loving  arms  to  his  dress- 
ing-room. At  the  end  of  an  hour  Wilks  is  there, 
and  Pinkethman,  and  Mrs.  Barry,  all  dressed  for  their 
parts,  and  agreeably  disappointed  to  find  the  Melan- 
tius  of  the  night  robed,  armoured,  and  besworded, 
with  one  foot  in  a  buskin  and  the  other  in  a  slipper. 
To  enable  him  to  even  wear  the  latter,  he  had  first 
thrust  his  inflamed  foot  into  water ;  but  stout  as  he 
seemed,  trying  his  strength  to  and  fro  in  the  room, 
the  hand  of  Death  was  at  that  moment  descending 
on  the  grandest  of  English  actors. 

The  house  rose  to  receive  him  who  had  delighted 
themselves,  their  sires,  and  their  grandsires.  The 
audience  were  packed  "like  Norfolk  biffins."  The 
edifice  itself  was  only  five  years  old,  and  when  it  was 
a-building,  people  laughed  at  the  folly  which  reared 
a  new  theatre  in  the  country,  instead  of  in  London; 
for  in  1705  all  beyond  the  rural  Haymarket  was 
open  field,  straight  away  westward  and  northward. 
That  such  a  house  could  ever  be  filled  was  set  down 
as  an  impossibility ;  but  the  achievement  was  ac- 
complished on  this  eventful  benefit  night,  when  the 
popular  favourite  was  about  to  utter  his  last  words, 
and  to  belong  thenceforward  only  to  the  history  of 
the  stage  he  had  adorned. 

There  was  a  shout  which  shook  him,  as  Lysippus 
uttered  the  words  **  Noble  Melantius,"  which  heralded 
his  coming.  Every  word  which  could  be  applied  to 
himself  was  marked  by  a  storm  of  applause,  and  when 
Melantius  said  of  Amintor  : 

"  His  youth  did  promise  much,  and  his  ripe  years 
Will  see  it  all  performed," 


io6  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

a  murmuring  comment  ran  round  the  house,  that  this 
had  been  effected  by  Betterton  himself.  Again,  when 
he  bid  Amintor  "  hear  thy  friend,  who  has  more  years 
than  thou,"  there  were  probably  few  who  did  not 
wish  that  Betterton  was  as  young  as  Wilks  :  but 
when  he  subsequently  thundered  forth  the  famous 
passage,  *'  My  heart  will  never  fail  me,"  there  was 
a  very  tempest  of  excitement,  which  was  carried  to 
its  utmost  height,  in  thundering  peal  on  peal  of 
unbridled  approbation,  as  the  great  Rhodian  gazed 
full  on  the  house,  exclaiming  : 

"  My  heart 
And  limbs  are  still  the  same :  my  will  as  great 
To  do  you  service ! " 

No  one  doubted  more  than  a  fractional  part  of  this 
assertion,  and  Betterton,  acting  to  the  end  under  a 
continued  fire  of  "  bravoes !  "  may  have  thrown  more 
than  the  original  meaning  into  the  phrase  : 

"  That  little  word  was  worth  all  the  sounds 
That  ever  I  shall  hear  again !  " 

Few  were  the  words  he  was  destined  ever  to  hear 
again ;  and  the  subsequent  prophecy  of  his  own  cer- 
tain and  proximate  death,  on  which  the  curtain  slowly 
descended,  was  fulfilled  eight  and  forty  hours  after 
they  were  uttered. 

Such  was  the  close  of  a  career  which  had  com- 
menced fifty-one  years  before !  Few  other  actors 
of  eminence  have  kept  the  stage,  with  the  public 
favour,  for  so  extended  a  period,  with  the  exception 
of  Cave  Underbill,  Quin,  Macklin,  King,  and  in 
later  times,  Hartley  and  Cooper,  most  of  whom  at 


THOMAS  BETTERTON  107 

least  accomplished  their  half-century.  The  record 
of  that  career  affords  many  a  lesson  and  valuable 
suggestion  to  young  actors,  but  I  have  to  say  a  word 
previously  of  the  Bettertons,  before  the  brothers 
of  that  name,  Thomas  and  the  less  known  William, 
assumed  the  sock  and  buskin. 

Tothill  Street,  Westminster,  is  not  at  present  a 
fine  or  fragrant  locality.  It  has  a  crapulous  look 
and  a  villainous  smell,  and  petty  traders  now  huddle 
together  where  nobles  once  were  largely  housed. 
Thomas  Betterton  was  born  here,  about  the  year 
1634-35.  The  street  was  then  in  its  early  decline, 
or  one  of  King  Charles's  cooks  could  hardly  have  had 
a  home  in  it.  Nevertheless,  there  still  clung  to  it  a 
considerable  share  of  dignity.  Even  at  that  time 
there  was  a  Tothill  Fields  House  of  Correction, 
whither  vagabonds  were  sent  who  used  to  earn  scraps 
by  scraping  trenchers  in  the  tents  pitched  in  Petty 
France.  All  else  in  the  immediate  neighbourhood 
retained  an  air  of  pristine  and  very  ancient  nobility. 
I  therefore  take  the  father  of  Betterton,  cook  to 
King  Charles,  to  have  been  a  very  good  gentleman, 
in  his  way.  He  was  certainly  the  sire  of  one,  and 
the  circumstance  of  the  apprenticeship  of  young 
Thomas  to  a  bookseller  was  no  evidence  to  the  con- 
trary. In  those  days,  it  was  the  custom  for  greater 
men  than  the  chefs  in  the  king's  kitchen,  namely,  the 
bishops  in  the  king's  Church,  to  apprentice  their 
younger  sons,  at  least,  to  trade,  or  to  bequeath 
sums  for  that  especial  purpose.  The  last  instance  I 
can  remember  of  this  traditionary  custom  presents 
itself  in  the  person,  not  indeed  of  a  son  of  a  bishop, 
but  the  grandson  of  an  archbishop,  namely,  of  John 


io»  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

Sharp,  Archbishop  of  York  from  169 1  to  1 714.  He 
had  influence  enough  with  Queen  Anne  to  prevent 
Swift  from  obtaining  a  bishopric.  His  son  was  Arch- 
deacon of  Northumberland,  and  of  this  archdeacon's 
sons  one  was  prebendary  of  Durham,  while  the  other, 
the  celebrated  Granville  Sharp,  the  "friend  of  the 
Negro,"  was  apprenticed  to  a  linen-draper,  on  Tower 
Hill.  The  early  connection  of  Betterton,  therefore, 
with  Rhodes,  the  Charing  Cross  bookseller,  is  not 
to  be  accepted  as  a  proof  that  his  sire  was  not  in  a 
"  respectable  "  position  in  society.  That  sire  had  had 
for  his  neighbour,  only  half  a  dozen  years  before 
Thomas  was  born,  the  well-known  Sir  Henry  Spel- 
man,  who  had  since  removed  to  more  cheerful  quar- 
ters in  Barbican.  A  very  few  years  previously.  Sir 
George  Carew  resided  here,  in  Caron  House,  and  his 
manuscripts  are  not  very  far  from  the  spot  even  now. 
They  refer  to  his  experiences  as  lord  deputy  in  Ire- 
land, and  are  deposited  in  the  library  at  Lambeth 
Palace.  These  great  men  were  neighbours  of  the 
elder  Betterton,  and  they  had  succeeded  to  men  not 
less  remarkable.  One  of  the  latter  was  Arthur,  Lord 
Grey,  of  Wilton,  the  friend  of  Spenser,  and  the  Talus 
of  that  poet's  *'  Iron  Flail."  The  Greys,  indeed,  had 
long  kept  house  in  Tothill  Street,  as  had  also  the 
Lord  Dacre  of  the  South.  When  Betterton  was 
bom  here,  the  locality  was  still  full  of  the  story  of 
Thomas,  Lord  Dacre,  who  went  thence  to  be  hanged 
at  Tyburn,  in  1541.  He  had  headed  a  sort  of 
Chevy  Chase  expedition  into  the  private  park  of  Sir 
Nicholas  Pelham,  in  Sussex,  In  the  fray  which 
ensued,  a  keeper  was  killed,  of  which  deed  my  lord 
took   all  the  responsibility,  and,   very  much  to  his 


THOMAS  BETTERTON  109 

surprise,  was  hanged  in  consequence.  The  mansion 
built  by  his  son,  the  last  lord,  had  not  lost  its 
first  freshness  when  the  Bettertons  resided  here, 
and  its  name,  Stourton  House,  yet  survives  in  the 
corrupted  form  of  Strutton  Ground. 

Thus,  the  Bettertons  undoubtedly  resided  in  a 
"fashionable"  locality,  and  we  may  fairly  conclude 
that  their  title  to  "  respectability "  has  been  so  far 
established.  That  the  street  long  continued  to  enjoy 
a  certain  dignity  is  apparent  from  the  fact  that,  in 
1664,  when  Betterton  was  rousing  the  town  by  his 
acting,  as  Bosola,  in  Webster's  "  Duchess  of  Malfy," 
Sir  Henry  Herbert  established  his  office  of  master 
of  the  revels  in  Tothill  Street.  It  was  not  till  the 
next  century  that  the  decline  of  this  street  set  in. 
Southeme,  the  dramatist,  resided  and  died  there,  but 
it  was  in  rooms  over  an  oilman's  shop ;  and  Edmund 
Burke  lived  modestly  at  the  east  end,  before  those 
mysterious  thousands  were  amassed  by  means  of 
which  he  was  at  length  enabled  to  establish  himself 
as  a  country  gentleman. 

Gait,  and  the  other  biographers  of  Betterton,  com- 
plain of  the  paucity  of  materials  for  the  life  of  so 
great  an  actor.  Therein  is  his  life  told ;  or  rather 
Pepys  tells  it  more  correctly  in  an  entry  for  his  diary 
for  October,  1662,  in  which  he  says:  "Betterton  is 
a  very  sober,  serious  man,  and  studious,  and  humble, 
following  of  his  studies ;  and  is  rich  already  with 
what  he  gets  and  saves."  There  is  the  great  and 
modest  artist's  whole  life,  —  earnestness,  labour,  lack 
of  presumption,  and  the  recompense.  At  the  two 
ends  of  his  career,  two  competent  judges  pronounced 
him  to  be  the  best  actor  they  had  ever  seen.     The 


tto  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

two  men  were  Pepys,  who  was  bom  in  the  reign  of 
Charles  I.,  and  Pope,  who  died  in  the  reign  of 
George  II.  This  testimony  refers  to  above  a  cen- 
tury, during  which  time  the  stage  knew  no  such 
player  as  he.  Pope,  indeed,  notices  that  old  critics 
used  to  place  Hart  on  an  equality  with  him  ;  this 
is,  probably,  an  error  for  Harris,  who  had  a  party 
at  court  among  the  gay  people  there  who  were  op- 
pressed by  the  majesty  of  Betterton.  Pepys  alludes 
to  this  partisanship  in  1 663.  "  This  fellow  "  (Harris), 
he  remarks,  "grew  very  proud  of  late,  the  king  and 
everybody  else  crying  him  up  so  high,  and  that 
above  Betterton,  he  being  a  more  aery  man,  as  he  is, 
indeed." 

-^  From  the  days  of  Betterton's  bright  youth  to  that 
of  his  old  age,  the  sober  seriousness  of  the  "artist," 
for  which  Pepys  vouches,  never  left  him.  With  the 
dress  he  assumed,  for  the  night,  the  nature  of  the 
man  —  be  it  Hamlet  or  Thersites,  Valentine  or  Sir 
John  Brute  —  of  whom  he  was  to  be  the  representa- 
tive. In  the  "  greenroom,"  as  on  the  stage,  he  was, 
for  the  time  being,  subdued  or  raised  to  the  quality 
of  him  whose  likeness  he  had  put  on.  In  presence 
of  the  audience,  he  was  never  tempted  by  applause 
to  forget  his  part,  or  himself.  Once  only,  Pepys 
registers,  with  surprise,  an  incident  which  took  place 
at  the  representation  of  "  Mustapha,"  in  1667.  It 
was  "bravely  acted,"  he  says,  "only  both  Betterton 
and  Harris  could  not  contain  from  laughing,  in  the 
midst  of  a  most  serious  part,  from  the  ridiculous 
mistake  of  one  of  the  men  upon  the  stage :  which  I 
did  not  like." 

Then   for   his   humiUty,  I    find  the   testimony  of 


THOMAS  BETTERTON  ill 

Pepys  sufficiently  corroborated.  It  may  have  been 
politic  in  him,  as  a  young  man,  to  repair  to  Mr. 
Cowley's  lodgings  in  town,  and  ask  from  that  author 
his  particular  views  with  regard  to  the  Colonel  Jolly 
in  the  "  Cutter  of  Coleman  Street,"  which  had  been 
entrusted  to  the  young  actor ;  but  the  politic  humil- 
ity of  1 66 1  was,  in  fact,  the  practised  modesty  of 
his  life.  In  the  very  meridian  of  his  fame,  he  and 
Mrs.  Barry,  also,  were  as  ready  to  take  instruction 
respecting  the  characters  of  Jaffier  and  Belvidera, 
from  poor  battered  Otway,  as  they  subsequently 
were  from  that  very  fine  gentleman,  Mr.  Congreve, 
when  they  were  cast  for  the  hero  and  heroine  of 
his  comedies.  Even  to  bombastic  Rowe,  who  hardly 
knew  his  own  reasons  for  language  put  on  the  lips 
of  his  characters,  they  listened  with  deference ;  and, 
at  another  period,  "  Sir  John  and  Lady  Brute  "  were 
not  undertaken  by  them  till  they  had  conferred  with 
the  author,  solid  Vanbrugh. 

The  mention  of  these  last  personages  reminds  me 
of  a  domestic  circumstance  of  interest  respecting 
Betterton.  He  and  Mrs.  Barry  acted  the  principal 
characters  in  the  "  Provoked  Wife ; "  the  part  of 
Lady  Fanciful  was  played  by  Mrs.  Bowman.  This 
young  lady  was  the  adopted  child  of  the  Bettertons, 
and  the  daughter  of  a  friend  (Sir  Frederick  Watson, 
Bart.)  whose  indiscretion  or  ill-luck  had  scattered  that 
fortune,  the  laying  of  the  foundation  of  which  is 
recorded  by  Pepys.  To  the  sire,  Betterton  had 
entrusted  the  bulk  of  his  little  wealth  as  a  commer- 
cial venture  to  the  East  Indies.  A  ruinous  failure 
ensued,  and  I  know  of  nothing  which  puts  the  private 
life  of  thp  actor  in  so  pleasing  a  light,  ^s  th^  fact 


iia  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

of  his  adopting  the  child  of  the  wholly  ruined  man 
who  had  nearly  ruined  him.  He  gave  her  all  he  had 
to  bestow,  careful  instruction  in  his  art ;  and  the 
lady  became  an  actress  of  merit.  This  merit,  added 
to  considerable  personal  charms,  won  for  her  the 
homage  of  Bowman,  a  player  who  became,  in  course 
of  time,  the  father  of  the  stage,  though  he  never 
grew,  confessedly,  old.  In  after-years,  he  would 
converse  freely  enough  of  his  wife  and  her  second 
father,  Betterton ;  but  if  you  asked  the  carefully 
dressed  Mr.  Bowman  anything  with  respect  to  his 
age,  no  other  reply  was  to  be  had  from  him  than, 
"  Sir,  it  is  very  well !  " 

From  what  has  been  previously  stated,  it  will  be 
readily  believed  that  the  earnestness  of  Betterton 
continued  to  the  last.  Severely  disciplined,  as  he 
had  been  by  Davenant,  he  subjected  himself  to  the 
same  discipline  to  the  very  close ;  and  he  was  not 
pleased  to  see  it  disregarded  or  relaxed  by  younger 
actors  whom  late  and  gay  "  last  nights  "  brought  ill 
and  incompetent  to  rehearsal.  Those  actors  might 
have  reaped  valuable  instruction  out  of  the  harvest 
of  old  Thomas's  experience  and  wisdom,  had  they 
been  so  minded. 

Young  actors  of  the  present  time  —  time  when 
pieces  run  for  months  and  years ;  when  authors  pre- 
scribe the  extent  of  the  run  of  their  own  dramas,  and 
when  nothing  is  "  damned "  by  a  patient  public  — 
our  young  actors  have  little  idea  of  the  labours  under- 
gone by  the  great  predecessors  who  gave  glory  to 
the  stage  and  dignity  to  the  profession.  Not  only 
was  Betterton's  range  of  characters  unlimited,  but 
the  number   he  "created"   was  never  equalled  by 


THOMAS  BETTERTON  113 

any  subsequent  actor  of  eminence  —  namely,  about 
130!  In  some  single  seasons  he  studied  and  repre- 
sented no  less  than  eight  original  parts  —  an  amount 
of  labour  which  would  shake  the  nerves  of  the  stout- 
est among  us  now. 

His  brief  relaxation  was  spent  on  his  little  Berk- 
shire farm,  whence  he  once  took  a  rustic  to  Bar- 
tholomew Fair  for  a  holiday.  The  master  of  the 
puppet-show  declined  to  take  money  for  admission. 
"  Mr.  Betterton,"  he  said,  "  is  a  brother  actor ! " 
Roger,  the  rustic,  was  slow  to  believe  that  the  pup- 
pets were  not  alive ;  and  so  similar  in  vitality  ap- 
*peared  to  him,  on  the  same  night,  at  Drury  Lane, 
the  Jupiter  and  Alcmena  in  "  Amphitryon,"  played 
by  Betterton  and  Mrs.  Barry,  that  on  being  asked 
what  he  thought  of  them,  Roger,  taking  them  for 
puppets,  answered,  "They  did  wonderfully  well  for 
rags  and  sticks." 

Provincial  engagements  were  then  unknown.  Trav- 
elling companies,  Hke  that  of  Watkins,  visited  Bath, 
a  regular  company  from  town  going  thither  only 
on  royal  command ;  but  magistrates  ejected  strollers 
from  Newbury  ;  and  Reading  would  not  tolerate  them, 
even  out  of  respect  for  Mr.  Betterton.  At  Wind- 
sor, however,  there  was  a  troupe  fairly  patronised, 
where,  in  1706,  a  Mistress  Carroll,  daughter  of  an 
old  parliamentarian,  was  awakening  shrill  echoes  by 
enacting  Alexander  the  Great.  The  lady  was  a 
friend  of  Betterton's,  who  had  in  the  previous  year 
created  the  part  of  Lovewell  in  her  comedy  of  the 
"  Gamester."  The  powers  of  Mrs.  Carroll  had  such 
an  effect  on  Mr.  Centlivre,  one  of  the  cooks  to 
Queen  Anne,  that  he  straightway  married  her ;  and 


114  THEIR  MAJESTIES*  SERVANTS 

when,  a  few  months  later,  Betterton  played  Sir 
Thomas  Beaumont,  in  the  lady's  comedy,  "  Love  at 
a  Venture,"  his  friend,  a  royal  cook's  wife,  furnished 
but  an  indifferent  part  for  a  royal  cook's  son. 

In  other  friendships  cultivated  by  the  great  actor, 
and  in  the  influences  which  he  exerted  over  the 
most  intellectual  men  who  were  his  friends,  we  may 
discover  proofs  of  Betterton 's  moral  worth  and 
mental  power.  Glorious  Thomas  not  only  associated 
with  "  Glorious  John,"  but  became  his  critic,  —  one 
to  whom  Dryden  listened  with  respect,  and  to  whose 
suggestions  he  lent  a  ready  acquiescence.  In  the 
poet's  "  Spanish  Friar,"  there  was  a  passage  whicl)^ 
spoke  of  kings'  bad  titles  growing  good  by  time ;  a 
supposed  fact  which  was  illustrated  by  the  lines  : 

"  So,  when  clay's  burned  for  a  hundred  years, 
It  starts  forth  china ! " 

The  player  fearlessly  pronounced  this  passage  "mean," 
and  it  was  forthwith  cancelled  by  the  poet. 

Intimate  as  this  incident  shows  Betterton  to  have 
been  with  Dryden,  there  are  others  which  indicate 
a  closer  intimacy  of  the  player  with  Tillotson.  The 
divine  was  a  man  who  placed  charity  above  rubrics, 
and  discarded  bigotry  as  he  did  perukes.  He 
could  extend  a  friendly  hand  to  the  benevolent  Arian, 
Firmin ;  and  welcome,  even  after  he  entered  the 
archiepiscopal  palace  at  Lambeth,  such  a  visitor  as 
the  great  actor,  Betterton.  Did  objection  come  from 
the  rigid  and  ultra-orthodox  ?  The  prelate  might  have 
reminded  them  that  it  was  not  so  long  since  a  bishop 
was  hanged,  and  that  the  player  was  a  far  more 
agreeable,  and,  in  every  respect,  a  worthier  man  than 


THOMAS  BETTERTON  11$ 

the  unlucky  diocesan  of  Waterford.  However  this 
may  be  questioned  or  conceded,  it  is  indisputable 
that  when  Tillotson  and  Betterton  met,  the  greatest 
preacher  and  the  greatest  player  of  the  day  were 
together.  I  think,  too,  that  the  divine  was,  in  the 
above  respect,  somewhat  indebted  to  the  actor.  We 
all  remember  the  story  how  Tillotson  was  puzzled  to 
account  for  the  circumstance  that  his  friend  the  actor 
exercised  a  vaster  power  over  human  sympathies  and 
antipathies  than  he  had  hitherto  done  as  a  preacher. 
The  reason  was  plain  enough  to  Thomas  Betterton. 
"  You,  in  the  pulpit,"  said  he,  "  only  tell  a  story ;  I, 
on  the  stage,  show  facts."  Observe,  too,  what  a 
prettier  way  this  was  of  putting  it  than  that  adopted 
by  Garrick  when  one  of  his  clerical  friends  was  simi- 
larly perplexed.  '*  I  account  for  it  in  this  way,"  said 
the  latter  Roscius  :  "  You  deal  with  facts  as  if  they 
were  fictions ;  I  deal  with  fictions  as  if  I  had  faith 
in  them  as  facts."  Again,  what  Betterton  thus 
remarked  to  Tillotson  was  a  modest  comment,  which 
Colley  Gibber  has  rendered  perfect  in  its  application, 
in  the  words  which  tell  us  that  "  the  most  a  Vandyke 
can  arrive  at  is  to  make  his  portraits  of  great  persons 
seem  to  think.  A  Shakespeare  goes  farther  yet,  and 
tells  you  what  his  pictures  thought.  A  Betterton 
steps  beyond  'em  both,  and  calls  them  from  the 
grave,  to  breathe  and  be  themselves  again  in  feature, 
speech  and  motion."  That  Tillotson  profited  by  the 
comment  of  Betterton  — more  gratefully  than  Bossuet 
did  by  the  actors,  whom  he  consigned,  as  such,  to 
the  nethermost  Gehenna  —  is  the  more  easily  to  be 
believed,  from  the  fact  that  he  introduced  into  the 
pulpit  the  custom  of  preaching  from  notes.     Thence- 


Ii6  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

forth,  he  left  off  "telling  his  story,"  as  from  a  book, 
and,  having  action  at  command,  could  the  nearer 
approach  to  the  "acting  of  facts." 

"  Virgilium  tantiim  vidi  !"  Pope  said  this  of  Dry- 
den,  whom  he  once  saw,  when  a  boy.  He  was  wont 
to  say  of  Betterton,  that  he  had  known  him  from  his 
own  boyhood  upwards,  till  the  actor  died,  in  17  lo, 
when  the  poet  was  twenty-two  years  of  age.  The 
latter  listened  eagerly  to  the  old  traditions  which 
the  player  narrated  of  the  earlier  times.  Betterton 
was  warrant  to  him  on  the  authority  of  Davenant, 
from  whom  the  actor  had  it,  that  there  was  no 
foundation  for  the  old  legend  which  told  of  an  ungen- 
erous rivalry  between  Shakespeare  and  Old  Ben. 
The  player  who  had  been  as  fearless  with  Dryden 
as  Socrates  was  with  his  friend  Euripides — "judi- 
ciously lopping"  redundant  nonsense  or  false  and 
mean  maxims,  as  Dryden  himself  confesses  —  was 
counsellor,  rather  than  critic  or  censor,  with  young 
Pope.  The  latter,  ^t  the  age  of  twelve  years,  had 
written  a  greater  portion  of  an  imitative  epic  poem, 
entitled  "  Alcander,  Prince  of  Rhodes."  I  commend 
to  artists  in  search  of  a  subject  the  incident  of  Pope, 
at  fifteen  or  sixteen,  showing  this  early  effort  of  his 
muse  to  Betterton.  It  was  a  poem  which  abounded 
in  dashing  exaggerations,  and  fair  imitations  of  the 
styles  of  the  then  greater  English  poets.  There  was 
a  dramatic  vein  about  it,  however,  or  the  player 
would  not  have  advised  the  bard  to  convert  his  poem 
into  a  play.  The  lad  excused  himself.  He  feared 
encountering  either  the  law  of  the  drama  or  the  taste 
of  the  town ;  and  Betterton  left  him  to  his  own 
unfettered  way.     The  actor  lived  to  see  that  the  boy 


THOMAS  BETTERTON  1 17 

was  the  better  judge  of  his  own  powers,  for  young 
Pope  produced  his  "  Essay  on  Criticism  "  the  year 
before  Betterton  died.  A  few  years  later  the  poet 
rendered  any  possible  fulfilment  of  the  player's 
counsel  impossible,  by  dropping  the  manuscript  of 
"Alcander"  into  the  flames.  Atterbury  had  less 
esteem  for  this  work  than  Betterton.  "  I  am  not 
sorry  your  'Alcander'  is  burnt,"  he  says,  "but  had 
I  known  your  intentions  I  would  have  interceded  for 
the  first  page,  and  put  it,  with  your  leave,  among  my 
curiosities." 

Pope  remembered  the  player  with  affection.  For 
some  time  after  Betterton's  decease  the  print-shops 
abounded  with  mezzotinto  engravings  of  his  portrait 
by  Kneller.  Of  this  portrait  the  poet  himself  exe- 
cuted a  copy,  which  still  exists.  His  friendly  inter- 
course with  the  half-mad  Irish  artist,  Jervas,  is  well 
known.  When  alone.  Pope  was  the  poet ;  with 
Jervas,  and  under  his  instructions,  he  became  an 
artist,  —  in  his  way ;  but  yet  an  artist,  —  if  a  copier 
of  portraits  deserve  so  lofty  a  name.  In  171 3,  he 
writes  to  Gay :  "  You  may  guess  in  how  uneasy  a 
state  I  am,  when  every  day  the  performances  of 
others  appear  more  beautiful  and  excellent,  and  my 
own  more  despicable.  I  have  thrown  away  three 
Doctor  Swifts,  each  of  which  was  once  my  vanity, 
two  Lady  Bridgewaters,  a  Duchess  of  Montague,  half 
a  dozen  earls,  and  one  Knight  of  the  Garter."  He 
perfected,  however,  and  kept  his  portrait  of  Betterton, 
from  Kneller,  which  passed  into  the  collection  of  his 
friend  Murray,  and  which  is  now  in  that  of  Murray's 
descendant,  the  Earl  of  Mansfield. 

Kneller's  portrait  of  Betterton  is  enshrined  among 


Ii8  THEIR   MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

goodly  company  at  princely  Knowle  —  the  patrimony 
of  the  Sackvilles.  It  is  there,  with  that  of  his  fellow 
actor,  Mohun ;  his  friend,  Dryden ;  and  his  great 
successor,  Garrick,  —  the  latter  being  the  work  of 
Reynolds.  The  grand  old  Kentish  Hall  is  a  fitting 
place  for  such  a  brotherhood. 

This  master  of  his  art  had  the  greatest  esteem  for 
a  silent  and  attentive  audience.  It  was  easy,  he 
used  to  say,  for  any  player  to  rouse  the  house,  but 
to  subdue  it,  render  it  rapt  and  hushed  to,  at  the 
most,  a  murmur,  was  work  for  an  artist ;  and  in  such 
effects  no  one  approached  him.  And  yet  the  rage 
of  Othello  was  more  "in  his  line"  than  the  tender- 
ness of  Castalio  ;  but  he  touched  the  audience  in  his 
rage.  Harris  competed  with  him  for  a  brief  period, 
but  if  he  ever  excelled  him  it  was  only  in  very  light 
comedy.  The  dignity  and  earnestness  of  Betterton 
were  so  notorious  and  so  attractive,  that  people 
flocked  only  to  hear  him  speak  a  prologue,  while 
brother  actors  looked  on,  admired,  and  despaired. 

Age,  trials,  infirmity  never  damped  his  ardour. 
Even  angry  and  unsuccessful  authors,  who  railed 
against  the  players  who  had  brought  their  dramas  to 
grief,  made  exception  of  Betterton.  He  was  always 
ready,  always  perfect,  always  anxious  to  effect  the 
utmost  within  his  power.  Among  the  foremost  of 
his  merits  may  be  noticed  his  freedom  from  all  jeal- 
ousy, and  his  willingness  to  assist  others  up  the 
height  which  he  had  himself  surmounted.  That  he 
played  Bassanio  to  Doggett's  Shylock  is,  perhaps, 
not  saying  much  by  way  of  illustration ;  but  that  he 
acted  Horatio  to  Powell's  Lothario ;  that  he  gave 
up  Jupiter  (Amphitryon)  and  Valentine,  two  of  his 


THOMAS  BETTERTON  119 

original  parts,  to  Wilks,  and  even  yielded  Othello, 
one  of  the  most  elaborate  and  exquisite  of  his  "  pre- 
sentments," to  Thurmond,  are  fair  instances  in  point. 
When  Bowman  introduced  young  Barton  Booth  to 
"old  Thomas,"  the  latter  welcomed  him  heartily,  and 
after  seeing  his  Maximus,  in  "  Valentinian,"  recog- 
nised in  him  his  successor.  At  that  moment  the 
town,  speculating  on  the  demise  of  their  favourite,  had 
less  discernment.  They  did  not  know  whether  Ver- 
bruggen,  with  his  voice  like  a  cracked  drum,  or  idle 
Powell,  with  his  lazy  stage-swing,  might  aspire  to  the 
sovereignty ;  but  they  were  slow  to  believe  in  Booth, 
who  was  not  the  only  young  actor  who  was  shaded 
in  the  setting  glories  of  the  sun  of  the  English 
theatre. 

When  Colley  Gibber  first  appeared  before  a  Lon- 
don audience,  he  was  a  "volunteer"  who  went  in  for 
practice ;  and  he  had  the  misfortune,  on  one  occasion, 
to  put  the  great  master  out,  by  some  error  on  his 
own  part.  Betterton  subsequently  inquired  the  young 
man's  name,  and  the  amount  of  his  salary ;  and  hear- 
ing that  the  former  was  Gibber,  and  that,  as  yet,  he 
received  nothing,  "  Put  him  down  ten  shillings 
a  week,"  said  Betterton,  "and  forfeit  him  five." 
Colley  was  delighted.  It  was  placing  his  foot  on 
the  first  round  of  the  ladder;  and  his  respect  for 
"Mr.  Betterton"  was  unbounded.  Indeed  there 
were  few  who  did  not  pay  him  some  homage.  The 
king  himself  delighted  to  honour  him.  Gharles, 
James,  Queen  Mary,  and  Queen  Anne,  sent  him 
assurances  of  their  admiration ;  but  King  William 
admitted  him  to  a  private  audience,  and  when  the 
patentees  of  Drury  Lane  were,  through  lack  of  gen- 


I20  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

eral  patronage,  suggesting  the  expediency  of  a  reduc- 
tion of  salaries,  great  Nassau  placed  in  the  hands  of 
Betterton  the  license  which  freed  him  from  the  thral- 
dom of  the  Drury  tyrants,  and  authorised  him  to  open 
the  second  theatre  erected  in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields. 
Next  to  his  most  sacred  Majesty,  perhaps  the  most 
formidable  personage  in  the  kingdom,  in  the  eyes  of 
the  actors,  was  the  lord  chamberlain,  who  was  master 
of  the  very  lives  of  the  performers,  having  the  abso- 
lute control  of  the  stage  whereby  they  Uved.  This 
potentate,  however,  seemed  ever  to  favour  Betterton. 
When  unstable  yet  useful  Powell  suddenly  abandoned 
Drury  Lane  to  join  the  company  in  Lincoln's  Inn 
Fields,  the  chamberlain  did  not  deign  to  notice  the 
offence ;  but  when,  all  as  suddenly,  the  capricious 
and  unreliable  Powell  abandoned  the  house  in  the 
Fields,  and  betook  himself  again  to  that  in  the  Lane  — 
the  angry  lord  chamberlain  sent  a  "  messenger  "  after 
him  to  his  lodgings,  and  clapped  the  unoffending 
Thespian,  for  a  couple  of  days,  in  the  Gate  House. 
While  Powell  was  with  Betterton,  the  latter  pro- 
duced the  "  Fair  Penitent,"  by  Rowe,  Mrs.  Barry 
being  the  Calista.  When  the  dead  body  of  Lothario 
was  lying  decently  covered  on  the  stage,  Powell's 
dresser,  Warren,  lay  there  for  his  master,  who,  re- 
quiring the  services  of  the  man  in  the  dressing-room, 
and  not  remembering  where  he  was,  called  aloud  for 
him  so  repeatedly,  and  at  length  so  angrily,  that 
Warren  leaped  up  in  a  fright,  and  ran  from  the 
stage.  His  cloak,  however,  got  hooked  to  the  bier, 
and  this  he  dragged  after  him,  sweeping  down,  as  he 
dashed  off  in  his  confusion,  table,  lamps,  books,  bones, 
and  upsetting  the  astounded  Calista  herself.     Irre- 


THOMAS  BETTERTON  121 

pressible  laughter  convulsed  the  audience,  but  Bet- 
terton's  reverence  for  the  dignity  of  tragedy  was 
shocked,  and  he  stopped  the  piece  in  its  full  career 
of  success,  until  the  town  had  ceased  to  think  of 
Warren's  escapade. 

I  know  of  but  one  man  who  has  spoken  of  Better- 
ton  at  all  disparagingly  —  old  Anthony  Aston.  But 
even  that  selfish  cynic  is  constrained  so  to  modify 
his  censure  as  to  convert  it  into  praise.  When 
Betterton  was  approaching  threescore  years  and  ten, 
Anthony  could  have  wished  that  he  "would  have 
resigned  the  part  of  Hamlet  to  some  young  actor 
who  might  have  personated,  though,"  mark  the  dis- 
tinction, "not  have  acted  it  better,"  Aston's  grounds 
for  his  wish  are  so  many  justifications  of  Betterton ; 
"for,"  says  Anthony,  "when  he  threw  himself  at 
Ophelia's  feet,  he  appeared  a  little  too  grave  for  a 
young  student  just  from  the  University  of  Witten- 
berg." "His  repartees,"  Anthony  thinks,  "were 
more  those  of  a  philosopher  than  the  sporting  flashes 
of  young  Hamlet ; "  as  if  Hamlet  were  not  the 
gravest  of  students,  and  the  most  philosophical  of 
young  Danes !  Aston  caricatures  the  aged  actor 
only  again  to  commend  him.  He  depreciates  the 
figure  which  time  had  touched,  magnifies  the  defects, 
registers  the  lack  of  power,  and  the  slow  sameness 
of  action ;  hints  at  a  little  remains  of  paralysis,  and 
at  gout  in  the  now  thick  legs,  profanely  utters  the 
words  "  fat "  and  "  clumsy,"  and  suggests  that  the 
face  is  "  slightly  pock-marked."  But  we  are  there- 
with told  that  his  air  was  serious,  venerable,  and 
majestic;  and  that  though  his  voice  was  "low  and 
grumbling,  he  could  turn  it  by  an  artful  climax  which 


132  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

enforced  an  universal  attention  even  from  the  fops  and 
orange-girls."  Gibber  declares  that  there  was  such 
enchantment  in  his  voice  alone,  the  multitude  no 
more  cared  for  sense  in  the  words  he  spoke,  "than 
our  musical  connoisseurs  think  it  essential  in  the 
celebrated  airs  of  an  ItaUan  Opera."  Again,  he 
says,  "  Could  how  Betterton  spoke  be  as  easily  known 
as  what  he  spoke,  then  might  you  see  the  Muse  of 
Shakespeare  in  her  triumph."  "I  never,"  says 
honest  Colley,  "heard  a  line  in  tragedy  come  from 
Betterton,  wherein  my  judgment,  my  ear,  and  my 
imagination  were  not  fully  satisfied,  which,  since  his 
time,  I  cannot  equally  say  of  any  one  actor  what- 
soever." This  was  written  in  1740,  the  year  before 
little  David  took  up  the  rich  inheritance  of  "old 
Thomas"  —  whose  Hamlet,  however,  the  latter  actor 
could  hardly  have  equalled.  The  next  great  pleas- 
ure to  seeing  Betterton's  Hamlet  is  to  read  Gibber's 
masterly  analysis  of  it.  A  couple  of  lines  reveal  to 
us  the  leading  principle  of  his  Brutus.  "  When  the 
Betterton-Brutus,"  says  Golley,  "was  provoked  in 
his  dispute  with  Gassius,  his  spirit  flew  only  to  his 
eye ;  his  steady  look  alone  supplied  that  terror  which 
he  disdained  an  intemperance  in  his  voice  should 
rise  to."  In  his  least  effective  characters,  he,  with 
an  exception  already  noted,  excelled  all  other  actors ; 
but  in  characters  such  as  Hamlet  and  Othello  he 
excelled  himself.  Gibber  never  beheld  his  equal  for 
at  least  two  and  thirty  years  after  Betterton's  death, 
when,  in  1741,  court  and  city,  with  doctors  of 
divinity  and  enthusiastic  bishops,  were  hurrying  to 
Goodman's  Fields,  to  witness  the  Richard  of  the 
gentleman  from  Ipswich,  named  Garrick. 


THOMAS  BETTERTON  123 

During  the  long  career  of  Betterton  he  played  at 
Drury  Lane,  Dorset  Gardens,  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields 
(in  both  theatres),  and  at  the  opera-house  in  the 
Haymarket.  The  highest  salary  awarded  to  this  great 
master  of  his  art  was  j£s  P^^  week,  which  included  j£i 
by  way  of  pension  to  his  wife,  after  her  retirement  in 
1694.  In  consideration  of  his  merits,  he  was  allowed  to 
take  a  benefit  in  the  season  of  1708-09,  when  the  actor 
had  an  ovation.  In  money  for  admission  he  received, 
indeed,  only  jCy6 ;  but  in  complimentary  guineas,  he 
took  home  with  him  to  Russell  Street  ;^4SO  more. 
The  terms  in  which  the  Tatler  spoke  of  him  living, 
—  the  tender  and  affectionate,  manly  and  heart- 
stirring  passages  in  which  the  same  writer  bewailed 
him  when  dead,  —  are  eloquent  and  enduring  testi- 
monies of  the  greatness  of  an  actor,  who  was  the  glory 
of  our  stage,  and  of  the  worth  of  a  man  whose  loss 
cost  his  sorrowing  widow  her  reason.  "  Decus  et 
Dolor''  "The  grace  and  the  grief  of  the  theatre." 
It  is  well  applied  to  him  who  laboured  incessantly, 
lived  irreproachably,  and  died  in  harness,  universally 
esteemed  and  regretted.  He  was  the  jewel  of  the 
English  stage;  and  I  never  think  of  him,  and  of 
some  to  whom  his  example  was  given  in  vain,  with- 
out saying,  with  Overbury,  "  I  value  a  worthy  actor 
by  the  corruption  of  some  few  of  the  quality,  as  I 
would  do  gold  in  the  ore ;  I  should  not  mind  the 
dross,  but  the  purity  of  the  metal." 

The  feeling  of  the  English  public  toward  Betterton 
is  in  strong  contrast  with  that  of  the  French  toward 
their  great  actor.  Baron.  Both  men  grew  old  in  the 
public  service,  but  both  were  not  treated  with  equal 
respect  in  the  autumn  of  thgt  service.     Betterton,  at 


184  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

seventy,  was  upheld  by  general  esteem  and  crowned 
by  general  applause.  When  Baron,  at  seventy,  was 
playing  Nero,  the  Paris  pit  audience,  longing  for 
novelty,  hissed  him  as  he  came  down  the  stage.  The 
fine  old  player  calmly  crossed  his  arms,  and  looking 
his  rude  assailants  in  the  face,  exclaimed,  "  Ungrate- 
ful pit !  'twas  I  who  taught  you ! "  That  was  the 
form  of  Baron's  exit ;  and  Clairon  was  as  cruelly 
driven  from  the  scene  when  her  dimming  eyes  failed 
to  stir  the  audience  with  the  old,  strange,  and  de- 
licious terror.  In  other  guise  did  the  English  public 
part  with  their  old  friend  and  servant,  the  noble 
actor,  fittingly  described  in  the  license  granted  to 
him  by  King  William,  as  "  Thomas  Betterton,  Gentle- 
man." 


CHAPTER  VI. 

«  EXEUNT "    AND  " ENTER  " 

After  Betterton,  there  was  not,  in  the  duke's 
company,  a  more  accomplished  actor  than  Harris. 
He  Uved  in  gayer  society  than  Betterton,  and  cared 
more  for  the  associates  he  found  there.  He  had 
some  knowledge  of  art,  danced  gracefully,  and  had 
that  dangerous  gift  for  a  young  man,  —  a  charming 
voice,  with  a  love  for  displaying  it.  His  portrait 
was  taken  by  Mr.  Hailes,  —  "  in  his  habit  of  Henry 
v.,  mighty  like  a  player ; ' '  and  his  Cardinal  Wol- 
sey,  which  latter  portrait  may  now  be  seen  in  the 
Pepysian  Library  at  Cambridge. 

Pepys  assigns  good  grounds  for  his  esteem  for 
Harris.  "I  do  find  him,"  says  the  diarist,  "a  very 
excellent  person,  such  as  in  my  whole  acquaintance 
I  do  not  know  another  better  qualified  for  converse, 
whether  in  things  of  his  own  trade,  or  of  other  kind  ; 
a  man  of  great  understanding  and  observation,  and 
very  agreeable  in  the  manner  of  his  discourse,  and 
civil,  as  far  as  is  possible.  I  was  mighty  pleased 
with  his  company,"  a  company  with  which  were 
united,  now  Killigrew  and  the  rakes,  and  anon, 
Cooper  the  artist,  and  "Cooper's  cosen  Jacke,"  and 
"  Mr.  Butler,  that  wrote  '  Hudibras,'  "  being,  says  Mr. 
Pepys,  "all  eminent   men  in  their  way."     Indeed, 

125 


126  THEIR  iVlAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

Harris  was  to  be  found  in  company  even  more 
eminent  than  the  above,  and  at  the  great  coffee- 
house in  Covent  Garden  he  listened  to  or  talked 
with  Dryden,  and  held  his  own  against  the  best  wits 
of  the  town.  The  playwrights  were  there,  too  ;  but 
these  were  to  be  found  in  the  coffee-houses,  gener- 
ally, often  wrapped  up  in  their  cloaks,  and  eagerly 
heeding  all  that  the  critics  had  to  say  to  each  other 
respecting  the  last  new  play, 

Harris  was  aware  that  in  one  or  two  light  charac- 
ters he  was  Betterton's  equal.  He  was  a  restless 
actor,  threatening,  when  discontented,  to  secede 
from  the  duke's  to  the  king's  company,  and  causing 
equal  trouble  to  his  manager,  Davenant,  and  to  his 
monarch,  Charles,  —  the  two  officials  most  vexed  in 
the  settling  of  the  little  kingdom  of  the  stage. 

There  was  a  graceful,  general  actor  of  the  troupe  to 
which  Harris  belonged,  who  drew  upon  himself  the 
special  observation  of  the  government  at  home  and 
an  English  ambassador  abroad.  Scudamore  was  the 
original  Garcia  of  Congreve's  "Mourning  Bride;" 
he  also  played  amorous  young  knights,  sparkling 
young  gentlemen,  scampish  French  and  English  beaux, 
gay  and  good-looking  kings,  and  roistering  kings* 
sons ;  such  as  Harry,  Prince  of  Wales.  Off  the 
stage,  he  enacted  another  part.  When  King  James 
was  in  exile,  Scudamore  was  engaged  as  a  Jacobite 
agent,  and  he  carried  many  a  despatch  between  Lon- 
don and  St.  Germains.  But  our  ambassador,  the 
Earl  of  Manchester,  had  his  eye  upon  him.  One  of 
the  earl's  despatches  to  the  English  government, 
written  in  1700,  concludes  with  the  words:  "One 
Scudamore,  a  player   in   Lincoln's    Inn    Fields,  has 


"EXEUNT"  AND  "ENTER"  i9J 

been  here,  and  was  with  the  late  king,  and  often  at 
St.  Germains.  He  is  now,  I  believe,  at  London. 
Several  such  sort  of  fellows  go  and  come  very  often ; 
but  I  cannot  see  how  it  is  to  be  prevented,  for  with- 
out a  positive  oath  nothing  can  be  done  to  them." 
The  date  of  this  despatch  is  August,  1 700,  at  which 
time  the  player  ought  to  have  been  engaged  in  a  less 
perilous  character,  for  an  entry  in  Luttrell's  Diary, 
28th  May,  1700,  records  that  Mr.  Scudamore  of  the 
playhouse  is  married  to  a  young  lady  of  ;^4,ooo 
fortune,  who  fell  in  love  with  him. 

Cave  Underbill  was  another  member  of  Davenant's 
company.  He  was  not  a  man  for  a  lady  to  fall  in 
love  with ;  but  in  1 668  Davenant  pronounced  him 
the  truest  comedian  of  his  troupe.  He  was  on  the 
stage  from  1661  to  17 10,  and  during  that  time  the 
town  saw  no  such  gravedigger  in  "  Hamlet "  as  this 
tall,  fat,  broad-faced,  flat-nosed,  wide-mouthed,  thick- 
lipped,  rough- voiced,  awkwardly  active  low  comedian. 
So  modest  was  he  also  that  he  never  understood  his 
own  popularity,  and  the  house  was  convulsed  with 
his  solemn  Don  Quixote  and  his  stupid  Lolpoop  in 
"The  Squire  of  Alsatia,"  without  Cave's  being  able 
to  account  for  it. 

In  the  stolid,  the  booby,  the  dully  malicious,  the 
bluntly  vivacious,  the  perverse  humour,  combining 
wit  with  ill-nature.  Underbill  was  the  chief  of  the 
actors  of  the  half  century,  during  which  he  kept  the 
stage.  Cibber  avers  thus  much,  and  adds  that  he 
had  not  seen  Cave's  equal  in  Sir  Sampson  Legend 
in  Congreve's  "  Love  for  Love."  A  year  before  the 
old  actor  ceased  to  linger  on  the  stage  he  had  once 
made  light  with  laughter,  a  benefit  was  awarded  him, 


laS  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

viz.,  on  the  3d  of  June,  1709.  The  patronage  of  the 
public  was  previously  bespoken  by  Mr.  Bickerstaffe, 
in  the  Tatler,  whose  father  had  known  "  honest  Cave 
Underbill  "  when  he  was  a  boy.  The  Tatler  praises 
the  old  comedian  for  the  natural  style  of  his  acting, 
in  which  he  avoided  all  exaggeration,  and  never 
added  a  word  to  his  author's  text,  a  vice  with  the 
younger  actors  of  the  time. 

On  this  occasion  Underbill  played  his  old  part  of 
the  gravedigger,  professedly  because  he  was  fit  for  no 
other.  His  judgment  was  not  ill-founded,  if  Gibber's 
testimony  be  true  that  he  was  really  worn  and  dis- 
abled, and  excited  pity  rather  than  laughter.  The 
old  man  died  a  pensioner  of  the  theatre  whose  pro- 
prietors he  had  helped  to  enrich,  with  the  reputation 
of  having,  under  the  pseudonym  of  Elephant  Smith, 
composed  a  mock  funeral  sermon  on  Titus  Gates ; 
and  with  the  further  repute  of  being  an  ultra-Tory, 
addicted  in  coffee-houses  to  drink  the  Duke  of  York's 
health  more  heartily  than  that  of  his  brother,  the 
king. 

With  rare  exchange  of  actors,  and  exclusive  right 
of  representing  particular  pieces,  the  two  theatres 
continued  in  opposition  to  each  other  until  the  two 
companies  were  formed  into  one,  in  the  year  1682. 
Meanwhile,  fire  destroyed  the  old  edifice  of  the  king's 
company,  in  Drury  Lane,  in  January,  1672,  and  till 
Wren's  new  theatre  was  ready  for  them  in  1674,  the  un- 
housed troupe  played  occasionally  at  Dorset  Gardens, 
or  at  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  as  opportunity  offered. 
On  the  occasion  of  opening  the  new  house,  contem- 
porary accounts  state  that  the  prices  of  admission 
were  raised  j  to  the  boxes,  from  2s.  6d.  to  4^. ;  pit, 


"EXEUNT"  AND  "ENTER"  129 

from  IS.  6d.  to  2s.  6d. ;  the  first  gallery,  from  is.  to 
IS.  6d. ;  and  the  upper  gallery,  from  6d.  to  \s. 
Pepys,  however,  on  the  19th  October,  1667,  paid 
4J.  for  admittance  to  the  upper  boxes,  if  his  record 
be  true. 

Down  to  the  year  1682,  the  king's  company  lost 
several  old  and  able  actors,  and  acquired  only  Powell, 
Griffin,  and  Beeston.  George  Powell  was  the  son  of 
an  obscure  actor.  His  own  brilliancy  was  marred  by 
his  devotion  to  jollity,  and  this  devotion  became  the 
more  profound  as  George  saw  himself  surpassed  by 
steadier  actors,  one  of  whom,  Wilks,  in  his  disap- 
pointment, he  challenged  to  single  combat,  and,  in 
the  cool  air  of  "next  morning,"  was  sorry  for  his 
folly.  Idleness  made  him  defer  learning  his  parts  till 
the  last  moment ;  his  memory  often  failed  him  at  the 
most  important  crisis  of  the  play,  and  the  public  dis- 
pleasure fell  heavily  and  constantly  on  this  clever,  but 
reckless,  actor.  The  Tatler  calls  him  the  "haughty 
George  Powell,"  when  referring  to  his  appearance  in 
Falstaff  for  his  benefit  in  April,  1 7 1 2.  "  The  haughty 
George  Powell  hopes  all  the  good-natured  part  of  the 
town  will  favour  him  whom  they  applauded  in  Alex- 
ander, Timon,  Lear,  and  Orestes,  with  their  company 
this  night,  when  he  hazards  all  his  heroic  glory  in  the 
humbler  condition  of  honest  Jack  Falstaff."  Valuable 
aid,  like  the  above,  he  obtained  from  the  Spectator  also, 
with  useful  admonition  to  boot,  from  which  he  did  not 
care  to  profit ;  and  he  fell  into  such  degradation  that 
his  example  was  a  wholesome  terror  to  young  actors 
willing  to  follow  it,  but  fearful  of  the  consequences. 
During  his  career,  from  1687  to  17 14,  in  which  year 
he  died,  he  ori^natcd  about  forty  new  parts,  and  in 


I30  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

some  of  them,  such  as  Brisk,  in  the  "Double 
Dealer;"  Aboan,  in  "Oronooko;"  the  gallant,  gay 
Lothario;  Lord  Morelove,  in  the  "Careless  Hus- 
band;" and  Fortius,  in  "Cato,"  he  has  rarely  been 
equalled.  On  the  first  night  of  the  "  Relapse,"  in 
which  he  played  Worthy,  he  was  so  fired  by  his  liba- 
tions, that  Mrs.  Rogers,  as  Amanda,  was  frightened 
out  of  her  wits  by  his  tempestuous  love-making. 
Powell's  literary  contributions  to  the  drama  were 
such  as  a  man  of  his  quality  was  likely  to  make,  — 
chiefly  plagiarisms  awkwardly  appropriated. 

Griffin  was  an  inferior  actor  to  Powell ;  but  he  was 
a  wiser  and  a  better  man.  He  belonged  to  that  class 
of  actors  whom  "society"  welcomed  with  alacrity. 
He  was,  moreover,  of  the  class  which  had  served  in 
the  field  as  well  as  on  the  stage,  and  when  "  Captain 
Griffin  "  died  in  Queen  Anne's  reign,  the  stage  lost  a 
respectable  actor,  and  society  a  clever  and  a  worthy 
member. 

The  accessions  to  the  duke's  company  were  of 
more  importance  than  those  to  the  company  of  the 
Theatre  Royal.  In  1672,  the  two  poets,  Lee  and 
Otway,  tempted  fortune  on  the  stage ;  Lee,  in  one  or 
two  parts,  such  as  the  Captain  of  the  Watch,  in  Payne's 
"Fatal  Jealousy,"  and  Duncan,  in  "Macbeth."  Ot- 
way, as  the  king  in  Mrs.  Behn's  "  Forced  Marriage." 
They  both  failed.  Lee,  one  of  the  most  beautiful  of 
readers,  lost  his  voice  through  nervousness.  Otway, 
audacious  enough  at  the  coffee-houses,  lost  his  con- 
fidence. There  were  eight  other  actors  of  the  period 
whose  success  was  unquestionable  and  well  deserved. 
Little  Bowman,  who  between  this  period  and  1739, 
the  year  of  his  death,  never  failed  to  appear  when  his 


"EXEUNT"  AND  "ENTER"  131 

name  was  in  the  bills.  He  was  a  noted  bell-ringer, 
had  sung  songs  to  Charles  II.,  and,  when  "father  of 
the  stage,"  he  exacted  applause  from  the  second 
George.  Cademan  was  another  of  the  company. 
Like  Betterton  and  Cartwright,  he  had  learnt  the 
mystery  of  the  book-trade  before  he  appeared  as  a 
player.  He  was  driven  from  the  latter  vocation 
through  an  accident.  Engaged  in  a  fencing-scene 
with  Harris,  in  "The  Man's  the  Master,"  he  was 
severely  wounded  by  his  adversary's  foil,  in  the  hand 
and  eye,  and  he  lost  power  not  only  of  action  but  of 
speech.  For  nearly  forty  years  the  company  assigned 
him  a  modest  pension  ;  and  between  the  benevolence 
of  his  brethren  and  the  small  profits  of  his  publish- 
ing, his  life  was  rendered  tolerable,  if  not  altogether 
happy. 

His  comrade,  Jevon,  an  ex-dancing  master,  was 
one  of  the  hilarious  actors.  He  was  the  original 
Jobson  in  his  own  little  comedy,  "A  Devil  of  a 
Wife,"  which  has  been  altered  into  the  farce  of  "  The 
Devil  to  Pay."  He  took  great  liberties  with  authors 
and  audience.  He  made  Settle  half-mad,  and  the 
house  ecstatic,  when  having,  as  Lycurgus,  Prince  of 
China,  to  "fall  on  his  sword,"  he  placed  it  fiat  on  the 
stage,  and  falling  over  it,  "died,"  according  to  the 
direction  of  the  acting  copy.  He  took  as  great 
liberties  at  the  coffee-house.  "  You  are  wiping  your 
dirty,  boots  with  my  clean  napkin,"  said  an  offended 
waiter  to  him,  "  Never  mind,  boy,"  was  the  reply ; 
"  I  am  not  proud  —  it  will  do  for  me !  "  The  dust  of 
this  jester  lies  in  Hampstead  churchyard. 

Longer  known  was  Anthony  Lee  or  Leigh,  that 
industrious  and  mirthful  player,  who,  in  the  score  of 


13a  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

years  he  was  before  the  public  —  from  1672  to  1692 
—  originated  above  thrice  that  number  of  characters. 
His  masterpiece  was  Dryden's  Spanish  friar,  Domi- 
nique. How  he  looked  in  that  once  famous  part, 
may  be  seen  by  any  one  who  can  gain  access  to  Knowle, 
where  his  portrait,  painted  for  the  Earl  of  Dorset, 
still  hangs  —  and  all  but  speaks.  But  we  may  see 
how  Leigh  looked  by  another  portrait,  painted  in 
words,  by  Gibber.  "  In  the  canting,  grave  hypocrisy, 
of  the  Spanish  Friar,  Leigh  stretched  the  veil  of  piety 
so  thinly  over  him,  that  in  every  look,  word,  and 
motion,  you  saw  a  palpable,  wicked  slyness  shine 
throughout  it.  Here  he  kept  his  vivacity  demurely 
confined,  till  the  pretended  duty  of  his  function  de- 
manded it ;  and  then  he  exerted  it  with  a  choleric, 
sacerdotal  insolence.  I  have  never  yet  seen  any  one 
that  has  filled  them"  (the  scenes  of  broad  jests) 
"with  half  the  truth  and  spirit  of  Leigh.  I  do  not 
doubt  but  the  poet's  knowledge  of  Leigh's  genius 
helped  him  to  many  a  pleasant  stroke  of  nature, 
which,  without  that  knowledge,  never  might  have 
entered  into  his  conception."  Leigh  had  the  art  of 
making  pieces  —  dull  to  the  reader  —  side-splitting 
mirth  to  an  audience.  In  such  pieces  he  and  Nokes 
kept  up  the  ball  between  them ;  but  with  the  players 
perished  also  the  plays. 

Less  happy  than  Leigh  was  poor  Matthew  Med- 
boume,  an  actor  of  merit,  and  a  young  man  of  some 
learning,  whose  brief  career  was  cut  short  by  a  too 
fervent  zeal  for  his  religion,  which  led  him  into  a 
participation  in  the  "Popish  Plot."  The  testimony 
of  Titus  Gates  caused  his  arrest  on  the  26th  of 
November,   1678,  and   his  death,  —  for  poor  Med- 


«  EXEUNT  "  AND  "  ENTER  "  133 

bourne  died  of  the  Newgate  rigour  in  the  following 
March.  He  is  memorable  as  being  the  first  who 
introduced  Moli^re's  "Tartuffe"  on  the  English 
stage,  in  a  close  translation,  which  was  acted  in 
1670,  with  remarkable  success.  Gibber's  "  Non- 
juror" (17 1 7),  and  Bickerstaffe's  "Hypocrite" 
(1768),  were  only  adaptations  —  the  first  of  "Tar- 
tuffe,"  and  the  second  of  the  "Nonjuror."  Mr. 
Oxenforde,  however,  reproduced  the  original  in  a 
more  perfect  form  than  Medbourne,  in  a  translation 
in  verse,  which  was  brought  out  at  the  Haymarket, 
in  185 1,  with  a  success  most  honestly  earned  by  all, 
and  especially  deserving  on  the  part  of  Mr.  Webster, 
who  played  the  principal  character. 

Sandford  and  Smith  were  two  actors,  whose  names 
constantly  recur  together,  but  whose  merits  were  not 
all  of  the  same  degree.  The  tall,  handsome,  manly 
Smith  frequently  played  Banquo,  when  his  ghost,  in 
the  same  tragedy,  was  represented  by  the  short,  spare, 
drolly  ill-featured,  and  undignified  Sandford !  The 
latter  was  famous  for  his  villains,  from  those  of 
tragedy  to  ordinary  stage  ruffians  in  broad  belt  and 
black  wig,  —  permanent  type  of  those  wicked  people 
in  melodramas  to  this  day.  This  idiosyncrasy  amus- 
ingly puzzled  Charles  II.,  who,  in  supposed  allusion 
to  Shaftesbury,  declared  that  the  greatest  villain  of 
his  time  was  fair-haired. 

The  public,  of  this  period,  were  so  accustomed  to 
see  Sandford  represent  the  malignant  heroes,  that 
when  they  once  saw  him  as  an  honest  man,  who  did 
not  prove  to  be  a  crafty  knave  before  the  end  of  the 
fifth  act,  they  hissed  the  piece,  out  of  sheer  vexation. 
Sandford   rendered  villainy  odious,  by  his  forcible 


134  THEIR  AlAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

representation  of  it.  By  a  look,  he  could  win  the 
attention  of  an  audience  "to  whatever  he  judged 
worth  more  than  their  ordinary  notice ; "  and  by 
attending  to  the  punctuation  of  a  passage,  he  divested 
it  of  the  jingle  of  rhyme,  or  the  measured  monotony 
of  blank  verse. 

So  misshapen,  harsh,  fierce,  yet  craftily  gentle  and 
knavishly  persuasive,  could  Sandford  render  himself, 
—  Gibber  believes  that  Shakspeare,  conscious  of  other 
qualities  in  him,  would  have  chosen  him  to  represent 
Richard,  had  poet  and  player  been  contemporaneous. 
The  generous  CoUey  adds,  that  if  there  was  anything 
good  in  his  own  Richard,  it  was  because  he  had 
modelled  it  after  the  fashion  in  which  he  thought 
Sandford  would  have  represented  that  monarch. 
Sandford  withdrew  from  the  stage,  after  thirty- 
seven  years'  service,  commencing  in  1661,  and 
terminating  in   1698. 

The  career  of  his  more  celebrated  colleague,  Smith, 
extended  only  from  1663  to  1696,  and  that  with  the 
interruption  of  several  years  when  his  strong  Tory- 
ism made  him  unacceptable  to  the  prejudiced  Whig 
audiences  of  the  early  part  of  the  reign  of  William. 
He  originally  represented  Sir  Fopling  Flutter  (1676), 
and  Pierre  (1682);  Chamont  (1680),  in  "The  Or- 
phan," and  Scandal  (1695),  in  "Love  for  Love."  In 
the  following  year  he  died  in  harness.  The  long  part 
of  Cyaxares,  in  "Cyrus  the  Great,"  overtaxed  his 
strength,  and  on  the  fourth  representation  of  that 
wearisome  tragedy,  Smith  was  taken  ill,  and  died. 

King  James,  in  the  person  of  Smith,  vindicated  the 
nobility  of  his  profession.  "  Mr.  Smith,"  says  Gib- 
ber, with  fine  satire,  "  wjioge  character  as  a  gentleman 


"EXEUNT"  AND  "ENTER"  135 

could  have  been  no  way  impeached,  had  he  not 
degraded  it  by  being  a  celebrated  actor,  had  the 
misfortune,  in  a  dispute  with  a  gentleman  behind  the 
scenes,  to  receive  a  blow  from  him.  The  same  night 
an  account  of  this  action  was  carried  to  the  king,  to 
whom  the  gentleman  was  represented  so  grossly  in 
the  wrong,  that  the  next  day  his  Majesty  sent  to  for- 
bid him  the  court  upon  it.  This  indignity,  cast  upon 
a  gentleman  only  for  maltreating  a  player,  was  looked 
upon  as  the  concern  of  every  gentleman  ;  and  a  party 
was  soon  formed  to  assert  and  vindicate  their  honour, 
by  humbling  this  favoured  actor,  whose  slight  injury 
had  been  judged  equal  to  so  severe  a  notice.  Accord- 
ingly, the  next  time  Smith  acted,  he  was  received 
with  a  chorus  of  catcalls,  that  soon  convinced  him  he 
should  not  be  suffered  to  proceed  in  his  part ;  upon 
which,  without  the  least  discomposure,  he  ordered  the 
curtain  to  be  dropped,  and  having  a  competent  for- 
tune of  his  own,  thought  the  conditions  of  adding  to 
it,  by  remaining  on  the  stage,  were  too  dear,  and 
from  that  day  entirely  quitted  it."  Not  "entirely," 
for  he  returned  to  it,  in  1695,  after  a  secession  of 
eleven  years,  under  the  persuasion,  it  is  believed,  of 
noble  friends  and  ancient  comrades.  Doctor  Burney 
states  that  the  audience  made  a  poUtical  matter  of  it. 
If  so,  Whigs  and  Tories  had  not  long  to  contend,  for 
the  death  of  this  refined  player  soon  supervened. 

Of  the  two  most  eminent  ladies  who  joined  the 
duke's  company  previous  to  the  union  of  the  two 
houses.  Lady  Slingsby  (formerly  Mrs.  Aldridge, 
next  Mrs.  Lee)  is  of  note  for  the  social  rank  she 
achieved,  —  Mrs.  Barry  for  a  theatrical  reputation 
which  placed  her  on  a  level  with  Betterton  himself. 


136  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

Lady  Slingsby  withdrew  from  the  stage  in  1685,  after 
a  brief  course  of  ten  or  a  dozen  years.  She  died  in 
the  spring  of  1694,  and  was  interred  in  old  St.  Pan- 
eras  churchyard,  as  "  Dame  Mary  Slingsby,  Widow." 
That  is  the  sum  of  what  is  known  of  a  lady  whom 
report  connects  with  the  Yorkshire  baronets  of 
Scriven.  Of  her  colleague  there  is  more  to  be 
said ;  but  the  "  famous  Mrs.  Barry "  may  claim  a 
chapter  to  herself. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

ELIZABETH    BARRY 

The  "great  Mrs.  Barry,"  the  "Handbook  of  Lon- 
don "  tells  us,  lies  buried  in  Westminster  Cloisters. 
I  did  not  there  look  for  her  tomb.  To  come  at  the 
grave  of  the  great  actress,  I  passed  through  Acton 
Vale  and  into  the  ugliest  of  village  churches,  and, 
after  service,  asked  to  be  shown  the  tablet  which 
recorded  the  death  and  burial  of  Elizabeth  Barry. 
The  pew-opener  directed  me  to  a  mural  monument 
which,  I  found,  bore  the  name  of  one  of  the  family  of 
Smith ! 

I  remonstrated.  The  good  woman  could  not  ac- 
count for  it.  She  had  always  taken  that  for  Eliza- 
beth Barry's  monument.  It  was  in  the  church 
somewhere.  "  There  is  no  stone  to  any  such  person 
in  this  church,"  said  the  clerk,  "and  I  know  'em 
all ! "  We  walked  down  the  aisle  discussing  the 
matter,  and  paused  at  the  staircase  at  the  west  end ; 
and  as  I  looked  at  the  wall,  while  still  conversing,  I 
saw,  in  the  shade,  the  tablet  which  Curie  says  is 
outside,  in  God's  Acre,  and  thereon  I  read  aloud 
these  words :  "  Near  this  place  lies  the  body  of 
Elizabeth  Barry,  of  the  parish  of  St.  Mary  le  Savoy, 
who  departed  this  life  the  7th  of  November,  17 13, 
aged  55  years."     "That  is  she  !  "  said  I. 

137 


138  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANfTS 

The  two  officials  looked  puzzled  and  inquiring. 
At  length  the  pew-opener  ventured  to  ask  ;  '•  And 
who  was  she,  sir  ? " 

"The  original  Monimia,  Belvidera,  Isabella,  Ca- 
lista  — " 

"  Lor !  "  said  the  good  woman,  "  only  a  player !  " 

"  Only  a  player !  "  This  of  the  daughter  of  an  old 
Cavalier ! 

The  seventeenth  century  gave  many  ladies  to  the 
stage,  and  Elizabeth  Barry  was  certainly  the  most 
famous  of  them.  She  was  the  daughter  of  a  bar- 
rister, wh9  raised  a  regiment  for  the  king,  and 
thereby  was  himself  raised  to  the  rank  of  colonel. 
The  effort  did  not  help  his  Majesty,  and  it  ruined 
the  colonel,  whose  daughter  was  bom  in  the  year 
1658. 

Davenant  took  the  fatherless  girl  into  his  house, 
and  trained  her  for  the  stage,  while  the  flash  of  her 
light  eyes  beneath  her  dark  hair  and  brows  was  as 
yet  mere  girlish  spirit ;  it  was  not  intelligence.  That 
was  given  her  by  Rochester.  Davenant  was  in  de- 
spair at  her  dulness,  but  he  acknowledged  the  dignity 
of  her  manners.  At  three  separate  periods  managers 
rejected  her.  "  She  will  never  be  an  actress  !  "  they 
exclaimed.  Rochester  protested  that  he  would  make 
her  one  in  six  months. 

The  wicked  young  earl,  who  lived  in  Lincoln's  Inn 
Fields,  near  the  theatre,  became  her  master,  and,  of 
course,  fell  in  love  with  his  pupil.  The  pains  he 
bestowed  upon  his  young  mistress  were  infinite. 
Sentence  by  sentence  he  made  her  understand  her 
author,  and  the  intelligence  of  the  girl  leaped  into 
life  and  splendour  under  such  instruction.     To  fa- 


ELIZABETH  BARRY  139 

miliarise  her  with  the  stage,  he  superintended  thirty 
rehearsals  thereon  of  each  character  in  which  she 
was  to  appear.  Of  these  rehearsals,  twelve  were  in 
full  costume ;  and  when  she  was  about  to  enact  Isa- 
bella, the  Hungarian  queen,  in  "  Mustapha,"  the  page 
who  bore  her  train  was  tutored  so  to  move  as  to  aid 
in  the  display  of  grace  and  majesty  which  was  to 
charm  the  town. 

For  some  time,  however,  the  town  refused  to  rec- 
ognise any  magic  in  the  charmer,  and  managers 
despaired  of  the  success  of  a  young  actress  who 
could  not  decently  thread  the  mazes  of  a  country- 
dance.  Hamilton  owned  her  beauty  but  denied  her 
talent.  Nevertheless  she  one  night  burst  forth  in 
all  her  grandeur,  and  Mustapha  and  Zanger  were  not 
more  ardently  in  love  with  the  brilliant  queen  than 
the  audience  were.  At  the  head  of  the  latter  were 
Charles  H.  and  the  Duke  and  Duchess  of  York. 
Rochester  had  asked  for  their  presence,  and  they 
came  to  add  to  the  triumph  of  Colonel  Barry's 
daughter. 

Crabbed  old  Anthony  Aston,  the  actor  and  promp- 
ter, spoke  disparagingly  of  the  young  lady.  Accord- 
ing to  him  she  was  no  colonel's  daughter,  but 
"woman  to  Lady  Shelton,  my  godmother."  The 
two  situations  were  not  incompatible.  It  was  no 
unusual  thing  to  find  a  lady  in  straitened  circum- 
stances fulfilling  the  oflfice  of  "  woman  "  or  "  maid  " 
to  the  wives  of  peers  and  baronets.  We  have  an 
instance  in  the  "  Memoirs  of  Mrs.  Delaney,"  and 
another  in  the  person  of  Mrs.  Siddons. 

Successful  as  Elizabeth  Barry  was  in  parts  which 
she  had  studied  under  her  preceptor,  Lord  Rochester, 


14©  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

she  cannot  be  said  to  have  established  herself  as  the 
greatest  actress  of  her  time  till  the  year  1680.  Up 
to  this  period  she  appeared  in  few  characters  suited 
to  her  abilities.  In  tragedies  she  enacted  the  confi- 
dants to  the  great  theatrical  queens,  Mrs.  Lee  and 
Mrs.  Betterton ;  in  comedies,  the  rattling,  reckless, 
and  audacious  women,  at  whose  sallies  the  pit  roared 
approbation,  and  the  box  ladies  were  not  much 
startled.  But,  in  the  year  just  named,  Otway  pro- 
duced his  tragedy  of  "  The  Orphan,  or  the  Unhappy 
Marriage,"  in  which  Mrs.  Barry  was  the  Monimia  to 
the  Castalio  of  Betterton.  On  the  same  night  the 
part  of  the  page  was  charmingly  played  by  a  future 
great  actress,  Mrs.  Bracegirdle,  then  not  six  years 
old.  In  Monimia,  Mrs.  Barry  exercised  some  of 
those  attributes  which  she  possessed  above  all  ac- 
tresses Gibber  had  ever  seen,  and  which  those  who 
had  not  seen  her  were  unable  to  conceive.  "  In 
characters  of  greatness,"  says  Gibber,  in  his  "  Apol- 
ogy," '*  she  had  a  presence  of  elevated  dignity ;  her 
mien  and  motion  superb  and  gracefully  majestic ; 
her  voice  full,  clear,  and  strong,  so  that  no  violence 
of  passion  could  be  too  much  for  her;  and  when 
distress  or  tenderness  possessed  her,  she  subsided 
into  the  most  affecting  melody  and  softness." 

From  the  position  which  she  took  by  acting 
Monimia,  Mrs.  Barry  was  never  shaken  by  any  rival, 
however  eminent.  Her  industry  was  as  indefati- 
gable as  that  of  Betterton.  During  the  thirty-seven 
years  she  was  on  the  stage,  beginning  at  Dorset 
Gardens,  in  1673,  and  ending  at  the  Haymarket,  in 
1 7 10,  she  originated  112  characters!  Monimia  was 
the  nineteenth  of  the  characters  of  which  she  was 


ELIZABETH  BARRY  141 

the  original  representative ;  the  first  of  those  which 
mark  the  "stations"  of  her  glory.  In  1682  she 
added  another  leaf  to  the  chaplet  of  her  own  and 
Ot way's  renown  by  her  performance  of  Belvidera. 
In  the  softer  passions  of  this  part  she  manifested 
herself  the  "mistress  of  tears,"  and  night  after  night 
the  town  flocked  to  weep  at  her  bidding,  and  to 
enjoy  the  luxury  of  woe.  The  triumph  endured  for 
years.  Her  Monimia  and  Belvidera  were  not  even 
put  aside  by  her  Cassandra  in  the  "  Cleomenes  "  of 
Dryden,  first  acted  at  the  Theatre  Royal,  in  1692. 
"Mrs.  Barry,"  says  the  author,  "always  excellent, 
has,  in  this  tragedy,  excelled  herself,  and  gained  a 
reputation  beyond  any  woman  whom  I  have  ever  seen 
on  the  theatre."  The  praise  is  not  unduly  applied, 
for  Mrs.  Barry  could  give  expression  to  the  rant  of 
Dryden,  and  even  to  that  of  Lee,  without  ever  verg- 
ing toward  bombast.  In  "  scenes  of  anger,  defiance, 
or  resentment,"  writes  Cibber,  "while  she  was  im- 
petuous and  terrible,  she  poured  out  the  sentiment 
with  an  enchanting  harmony."  Anthony  Aston  de- 
scribes her  in  tragedy  as  "  solemn  and  august ; "  and 
she,  perhaps,  was  never  more  so  than  in  Isabella,  the 
heroine  of  the  tragic  drama  rather  than  tragedy  by 
Southerne,  —  "  The  Fatal  Marriage."  Aston  remarks 
that  "her  face  ever  expressed  the  passions  ;  it  some- 
what preceded  her  action,  as  her  action  did  her 
words."  Her  versatility  was  marvellous,  and  it  is 
not  ill  illustrated  by  the  fact  that  in  the  same  season 
she  created  two  such  opposite  characters  as  Lady 
Brute  in  Vanbrugh's  "  Provoked  Wife,"  and  Zara  in 
Congreve's  "Mourning  Bride."  The  last  of  her 
great  tragic  triumphs,  in  a  part  of  which  she  was 


142  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

the  original  representative,  occurred  in  1703,  when, 
in  her  forty-fifth  year,  she  played  Calista  in  "The 
Fair  Penitent,"  that  wholesale  felony  of  Rowe  from 
Massinger !  Though  the  piece  did  not  answer  the 
expectations  of  the  public,  Mrs.  Barry  did  not  fall 
short  of  them  in  the  heroine ;  and  she,  perhaps,  sur- 
passed expectation  when,  in  1705,  she  elicited  the 
admiration  of  the  town  by  her  creation  of  the  spark- 
ling character  of  Clarissa  in  "  The  Confederacy." 
By  this  time  she  was  growing  rich  in  wealth  as  well 
as  in  glory.  In  former  days,  when  the  play  was 
over,  the  attendant  boy  used  to  call  for  "  Mrs.  Barry's 
clogs  !  "  or  "  Mrs.  Bracegirdle's  pattens  !  "  but  now, 
•'  Mrs.  Barry's  chair "  was  as  familiar  a  sound  as 
"  Mrs.  Oldfield's."  If  she  was  not  invariably  wise 
in  the  stewardship  of  her  money,  some  portions  were 
expended  in  a  judicious  manner  creditable  to  her 
taste.  At  the  sale  of  Betterton's  effects  she  pur- 
chased the  picture  of  Shakespeare  which  Betterton 
bought  from  Davenant,  who  had  purchased  it  from 
some  of  the  players  after  the  theatres  had  been 
closed  by  authority.  Subsequently  Mrs.  Barry  sold 
this  relic  for  forty  guineas  to  a  Mr.  Keck,  whose 
daughter  carried  it  with  her  as  part  of  her  dowry 
when  she  married  Mr.  Nicoll,  of  Colney  Hatch. 
Their  daughter  and  heiress,  in  her  turn,  took  the 
portrait  and  a  large  fortune  with  her  to  her  husband, 
the  third  Duke  of  Chandos ;  and,  finally,  Mrs. 
Barry's  efifigy  of  Shakespeare  passed  with  another 
bride  into  another  house.  Lady  Anne  Brydges,  the 
daughter  of  the  duke  and  duchess,  carrying  it  with 
her  to  Stowe  on  her  marriage  with  the  Marquis  of 
Buckingham,  subsequently  Duke  of  Buckingham  and 


ELIZABETH  BARRY  I43 

Chandos.     The  Chandos  portrait  of  the  great  dram- 
atist is  thus  descended. 

Mrs,  Barry,  like  many  other  eminent  members  of 
her  profession,  was  famous  for  the  way  in  which  she 
uttered  some  single  expression  in  the  play.  The 
"  Look  there !  "  of  Spranger  Barry,  as  he  passed  the 
body  of  Rutland,  always  moved  the  house  to  tears. 
So,  the  "  Remember  twelve !  "  of  Mrs.  Siddons's  Bel- 
videra ;  the  "  Well,  as  you  guess ! "  of  Edmund 
Kean's  Richard ;  the  "  Qu'en  dis  tu  ? "  of  Talma's 
Auguste;  the  "Je  crois ! "  of  Rachel's  Pauline;  the 
"  Je  vois  !  "  of  Mile.  Mars's  Valerie,  were  "  points  " 
which  never  failed  to  excite  an  audience  to  enthusi- 
asm. But  there  were  two  phrases  with  which  Mrs. 
Barry  could  still  more  deeply  move  an  audience. 
When,  in  "The  Orphan,"  she  pronounced  the  words, 
"  Ah,  poor  Castalio ! "  not  only  did  the  audience 
weep,  but  the  actress  herself  shed  tears  abundantly. 
The  other  phrase  was  in  a  scene  of  Banks's  puling  trag- 
edy, the  "  Unhappy  Favourite,  or  the  Earl  of  Essex." 
In  that  play  Mrs.  Barry  represented  Queen  Elizabeth, 
and  that  with  such  effect  that  it  was  currently  said 
the  people  of  her  day  knew  more  of  Queen  Eliza- 
beth from  her  impersonation  of  the  character  than 
they  did  from  history.  The  apparently  common- 
place remark,  "What  mean  my  grieving  subjects.?" 
was  invested  by  her  with  such  emphatic  grace  and 
dignity  as  to  call  up  murmurs  of  approbation  which 
swelled  into  thunders  of  applause.  Mary  of  Modena 
testified  her  admiration  by  bestowing  on  the  mimic 
queen  the  wedding  -  dress  Mary  herself  had  worn 
when  she  was  united  to  James  II.,  and  the  mantle 
borne  by  her  at  her  coronation.     Thus  attired,  the 


144  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

queen  of  the  hour  represented  the  EUzabeth,  with 
which  enthusiastic  crowds  became  so  much  more 
familiar  than  they  were  with  Elizabeth  of  history. 
But  this  "  solemn  and  august "  tragedian  could  also 
command  laughter,  and  make  a  whole  house  joyous 
by  the  exercise  of  another  branch  of  her  vocation. 
'*  In  free  comedy,"  says  Aston,  "  she  was  alert,  easy, 
and  genteel,  pleasant  in  her  face  and  action,  filling 
the  stage  with  variety  of  gesture.  So  entirely  did 
she  surrender  herself  to  the  influences  of  the  char- 
acters she  represented,  that  in  stage  dialogues  she 
often  turned  pale  or  flushed  red,  as  varying  passions 
prompted. 

With  the  audience  she  was  never  for  a  moment 
out  of  favour,  after  she  had  made  her  merit  apparent. 
They  acknowledged  no  greater  actress,  —  with  the 
single  exception  of  Mrs.  Betterton  in  the  character 
of  Lady  Macbeth.  Nevertheless,  on  and  behind  the 
stage,  Mrs.  Barry's  supremacy  was  sometimes  ques- 
tioned, and  her  commands  disobeyed.  When  she 
was  about  to  play  Roxana  to  the  Statira  of  Mrs. 
Boutell,  in  Nat.  Lee's  "  Rival  Queens,  or  the  Death 
of  Alexander  the  Great,"  she  selected  from  the 
wardrobe  a  certain  veil  which  was  claimed  by  Mrs. 
Boutell  as  of  right  belonging  to  her.  The  property- 
man  thought  so  too,  and  handed  the  veil  to  the  last 
named  lady.  His  award  was  reasonable,  for  she 
was  the  original  Statira,  having  played  the  part  to 
the  matchless  Alexander  of  Hart,  and  to  the  glowing 
Roxana  of  the  fascinating  Marshall.  I  fear,  however, 
that  the  lady  was  not  moderate  in  her  victory,  and 
that  by  flaunting  the  trophy  too  frequently  before 
the  eyes  of  the  rival  queen,  the  daughter  of  Darius 


ELIZABETH  BARRY  145 

exasperated  too  fiercely  her  Persian  rival  in  the  heart 
of  Alexander.  The  rage  and  dissension  set  down  for 
them  in  the  play  were,  at  all  events,  not  simulated. 
The  quarrel  went  on  increasing  in  intensity  from  the 
first,  and  culminated  in  the  gardens  of  Semiramis. 
When  Roxana  seized  on  her  detested  enemy  there, 
and  the  supreme  struggle  took  place,  Mrs.  Barry, 
with  the  exclamation  of,  "  Die,  sorceress,  die !  and 
all  my  wrongs  die  with  thee !  "  sent  her  polished 
dagger  right  through  the  stiff  armour  of  Mrs. 
Boutell's  stays.  The  consequences  were  a  scratch 
and  a  shriek,  but  there  was  no  great  harm  done. 
An  investigation  followed,  and  some  mention  was 
made  of  a  real  jealousy  existing  in  Mrs.  Barry's 
breast  in  reference  to  an  admirer  of  lower  rank  than 
Alexander,  lured  from  her  feet  by  the  little,  flute- 
voiced  Boutell.  The  deed  itself  was,  however,  mildly 
construed,  and  Mrs.  Barry  was  believed  when  she 
declared  that  she  had  been  carried  away  by  the  illu- 
sion and  excitement  of  the  scene.  We  shall  see  this 
same  scene  repeated,  with  similar  stage  effects,  by 
Mrs.  Woffington  and  Mrs.  Bellamy. 

If  there  were  a  lover  to  add  bitterness  to  the 
quarrel  engendered  by  the  veil,  Mrs.  Barry  might 
have  well  spared  one  of  whom  she  possessed  so 
many.  Without  being  positively  a  transcendent 
beauty,  her  attractions  were  confessed  by  many  an 
Antony  from  the  country,  who  thought  their  world 
of  acres  well  lost  for  the  sake  of  a  little  sunshine 
from  the  eyes  of  this  vanquishing,  imperious,  ban- 
queting, heart  and  purse  destroying  Cleopatra. 
There  were  two  classes  of  men  who  made  epigrams, 
or  caused  others  to  make  them  against  her,  namely, 


146  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

the  adorers  on  whom  she  ceased  to  smile,  and  those 
on  whom  she  refused  to  smile  at  all.  The  coffee- 
house poetry  which  these  perpetrated  against  her  is 
the  reverse  of  pleasant  to  read ;  but,  under  the  pro- 
tection of  such  a  wit  as  Etherege,  or  such  a  fine 
gentleman  as  Rochester,  Mrs.  Barry  cared  little  for 
her  puny  assailants. 

Tom  Brown  taxed  her  with  mercenary  feelings ; 
but  against  that  and  the  humour  of  writers  who 
affected  intimate  acquaintance  with  her  affairs  of 
the  heart  and  purse,  and  as  intimate  a  knowledge 
of  the  amount  which  Sir  George  Etherege  and  Lord 
Rochester  bequeathed  to  their  respective  daughters, 
of  whom  Mrs.  Barry  was  the  mother,  she  was  armed. 
Neither  of  these  children  survived  the  "famous 
actress."  She  herself  hardly  survived  Betterton,  — 
at  least  on  the  stage.  The  day  after  the  great 
tragedian's  final  appearance,  Mrs.  Barry  trod  the 
stage  for  the  last  time.  The  place  was  the  old  Hay- 
market,  the  play  the  "  Spanish  Friar,"  in  which  she 
enacted  the  queen.  And  I  can  picture  to  myself 
the  effect  of  the  famous  passage  when  the  queen 
impetuously  betrays  her  overwhelming  love.  "  Haste, 
my  Teresa,  haste ;  and  call  him  back !  "  "  Prince 
Bertram  } "  asks  the  confidante ;  and  then  came  the 
full  burst,  breaking  through  all  restraint,  and  reveal- 
ing a  woman  who  seemed  bathed  in  love :  "  Torris- 
mond  !     There  is  no  other  he  !  " 

Mrs.  Barry  took  no  formal  leave  of  the  stage,  but 
quietly  withdrew  from  St.  Mary-le-Savoy,  in  the 
Strand,  to  the  pleasant  village  of  Acton.  Mrs. 
Porter,  Mrs.  Rogers,  Mrs.  Knight,  and  Mrs.  Brad- 
shaw  succeeded  to  her  theatrical  dominion,  by  par- 


ELIZABETH  BARRY  147 

tition  of  her  characters.  If  tragedy  lost  its  queen, 
Acton  gained  a  wealthy  lady.  Her  professional 
salary  had  not  been  large,  but  her  "  benefits  "  were 
very  productive;  they  who  admired  the  actress  or 
who  loved  the  woman,  alike  pouring  out  gold  and 
jewels  in  her  lap.  It  was  especially  for  her  that 
performers'  benefits  were  first  devised.  Authors 
alone  had  hitherto  profited  by  such  occasions,  but 
in  recognition  of  her  merit,  King  James  commanded 
one  to  be  given  in  her  behalf,  and  what  was  com- 
menced as  a  compliment  soon  passed  into  a  custom. 

In  a  little  more  than  three  years  from  the  date 
when  the  curtain  fell  before  her  for  the  last  time, 
Elizabeth  Barry  died.  Brief  resting  season  after 
such  years  of  toil ;  but,  perhaps,  sufficient  for  better 
ends  —  after  a  career,  too,  of  unbridled  pleasure ! 
"This  great  actress,"  says  Gibber,  "dy'd  of  a  fever, 
toward  the  latter  years  of  Queen  Anne ;  the  year  I 
have  forgot,  but  perhaps  you  will  recollect  it,  by  an 
expression  that  fell  from  her  in  blank  verse,  in  her 
last  hours,  when  she  was  delirious,  viz.  : 

•«  *  Ha !  ha !  and  so  they  make  us  lords,  by  dozens ! ' " 

This,  however,  does  not  settle  the  year  so  easily  as 
Colley  thought.  In  December,  171 1,  Queen  Anne, 
by  an  unprecedented  act,  created  twelve  new  peers, 
to  enable  the  measures  of  her  Tory  ministers  to  be 
carried  in  the  Upper  House.  Mrs.  Barry  died  two 
years  later,  on  the  7th  of  November,  171 3,  and  the 
utterance  of  the  words  quoted  above  only  indicates 
that  her  wandering  memory  was  then  dealing  with 
incidents  full  two  years  old. 


148  THEIR  MAJESTIES*  SERVANTS 

They  who  would  see  how  Mrs,  Barry  looked  living, 
have  only  to  consult  Kneller's  grand  picture,  in  which 
she  is  represented  with  her  fine  hair  drawn  back 
from  her  forehead,  the  face  full,  fair,  and  rippling 
with  intellect.  The  eyes  are  inexpressibly  beautiful. 
Of  all  her  living  beauty,  living  frailty,  and  living 
intelligence,  there  remains  but  this  presentment. 

It  was  customary  to  compare  Mrs.  Barry  with 
French  actresses ;  but  it  seems  to  me  that  the  only 
French  actress  with  whom  Mrs.  Barry  may  be  safely 
compared  is  Mademoiselle,  or,  as  she  was  called 
with  glorious  distinction,  "the  Champmesl6."  This 
French  lady  was  the  original  Hermione,  Berenice, 
Monimia,  and  Phaedre.  These  were  written  ex- 
pressly for  her  by  Racine,  who  trained  her  exactly 
as  Rochester  did  Elizabeth  Barry,  —  to  some  glory 
on  the  stage,  and  to  some  infamy  off  it.  La  Champ- 
mesl6,  however,  was  more  tenderly  treated  by  society 
at  large  than  the  less  fortunate  daughter  of  an  old 
royalist  colonel.  The  latter  actress  was  satirised ; 
the  former  was  eulogised  by  the  wits,  and  she  was 
not  even  anathematised  by  French  mothers.  When 
La  Champmesl^  was  ruining  the  young  Marquis  de 
Sevign6,  his  mother  wrote  proudly  of  the  actress 
as  her  "daughter-in-law!"  as  if  to  have  a  son  hur- 
ried to  perdition  by  so  resplendent  and  destructive 
a  genius  was  a  matter  of  exultation  ! 

Having  sketched  the  outline  of  Mrs.  Barry's  career, 
1  proceed  to  notice  some  of  her  able,  though  less 
illustrious,  colleagues. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

"THEIR    FIRST    APPEARANCE    ON    THIS    STAGE" 

On  the  i6th  November,  1682,  the  United  Com- 
pany, the  flower  of  both  houses,  opened  their  season 
at  the  Theatre  Royal,  Drury  Lane.  The  theatre  in 
Dorset  Gardens  was  only  occasionally  used  ;  and  from 
1682  to  169s  there  was  but  one  theatre  in  London. 

Betterton  and  Mrs.  Barry  were,  of  course,  at  the 
head  of  this  company,  to  which  there  came  some 
accessions  of  note ;  among  others,  Mrs.  Percival, 
better  known  as  Mrs.  Mountfort,  and  finally  as  Mrs. 
Verbniggen.  A  greater  accession  was  that  of  the 
charming  Mrs.  Bracegirdle.  The  third  lady  was  Mrs. 
Jordan,  a  name  to  be  made  celebrated  by  a  later  and 
greater  actress,  who  had  no  legal  claim  to  it. 

Of  the  new  actors,  some  only  modestly  laid  the 
foundations  of  their  glory  in  this  company.  Chief  of 
these  was  Colley  Cibber,  who,  in  1691,  played  Sir 
Gentle's  Servant  in  Southerne's  "Sir  Anthony 
Love,"  had  a  part  of  nine  lines  in  Chapman's  "  Bussy 
d'Amboise,"  and  of  seventeen,  as  Sigismond  in 
Powell's  "Alphonso."  Bowen,  too,  began  with 
coachmen,  and  similar  small  parts,  while  that  prince 
of  the  droll  fellows  of  his  time,  Pinkethman,  com- 
menced his  career  with  a  tailor's  part,  of  six  lines  in 
length,  in   Shadwell's   "Volunteers."      Among  the 

149 


ISO  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

other  new  actors  were  Moiintfort,  Norris,  and  Dog- 
gett,  with  Verbruggen  (or  Alexander,  as  he  some- 
times called  himself,  from  the  character  which  he 
loved  to  play) ;  Gillow,  Carlisle,  Hodgson,  and  Peer, 

Amid  these  names,  that  of  Mrs.  Mountfort  stands 
out  the  most  brilliantly.  Her  portrait  has  been  so 
exquisitely  limned  by  Colley  Gibber,  that  we  see  her 
as  she  lived,  and  moved,  and  spoke. 

"  Mrs.  Mountfort  was  mistress  of  more  variety  of 
humour  than  I  ever  knew  in  any  one  actress.  This 
variety,  too,  was  attended  with  an  equal  vivacity, 
which  made  her  excellent  in  characters  extremely 
different.  As  she  was  naturally  a  pleasant  mimic, 
she  had  the  skill  to  make  that  talent  useful  on  the 
stage.  Where  the  elocution  is  round,  distinct,  voluble, 
and  various,  as  Mrs.  Mountfort's  was,  the  mimic  there 
is  a  great  assistance  to  the  actor.  Nothing,  though 
ever  so  barren,  if  within  the  bounds  of  nature,  could 
be  flat  in  her  hands.  She  gave  many  heightening 
touches  to  characters  but  coldly  written,  and  often 
made  an  author  vain  of  his  work,  that,  in  itself,  had 
but  little  merit.  She  was  so  fond  of  humour,  in  what 
low  part  soever  to  be  found,  that  she  would  make  no 
scruple  of  defacing  her  fair  form  to  come  heartily 
into  it,  for  when  she  was  eminent  in  several  desirable 
characters  of  wit  and  humour,  in  higher  life,  she 
would  be  in  as  much  fancy,  when  descending  into  the 
antiquated  Abigail  of  Fletcher,  as  when  triumphing 
in  all  the  airs  and  vain  graces  of  a  fine  lady ;  a  merit 
that  few  actresses  care  for.  In  a  play  of  Durfey's, 
now  forgotten,  called  '  The  Western  Lass,'  which 
part  she  acted,  she  transformed  her  whole  being  — 
body,  shape,  voice,  language,  look,   and  features  — 


"THEIR  FIRST  APPEARANCE  ON  THIS  STAGE"   151 

into  almost  another  animal,  with  a  strong  Devonshire 
dialect,  a  broad  laughing  voice,  a  poking  head,  round 
shoulders,  an  unconceiving  eye,  and  the  most  bedizen- 
ing, dowdy  dress  that  ever  covered  the  untrained 
limbs  of  a  Joan  Trot.  To  have  seen  her  here,  you 
would  have  thought  it  impossible  that  the  same  could 
ever  have  been  recovered  to,  what  was  as  easy  to 
her,  the  gay,  the  lively,  and  the  desirable.  Nor  was 
her  humour  limited  to  her  sex,  for  while  her  shape 
permitted,  she  was  a  more  adroit,  pretty  fellow  than 
is  usually  seen  upon  the  stage.  Her  easy  air,  action, 
mien,  and  gesture,  quite  changed  from  the  coif  to  the 
cocked-hat  and  cavalier  in  fashion.  People  were  so 
fond  of  seeing  her  a  man  that  when  the  part  of 
Bayes,  in  *The  Rehearsal,*  had  for  some  time  lain 
dormant,  she  was  desired  to  take  it  up,  which  I  have 
seen  her  act  with  all  the  true  coxcombly  spirit  and 
humour  that  the  sufficiency  of  the  character  required. 
"  But  what  found  most  employment  for  her  whole 
various  excellence  at  once  was  the  part  of  Melantha, 
in  *  Marriage  k  la  Mode.'  Melantha  is  as  finished  an 
impertinent  as  ever  fluttered  in  a  drawing-room,  and 
seems  to  contain  the  most  complete  system  of  female 
foppery  that  could  possibly  be  crowded  into  the  tor- 
tured form  of  a  fine  lady.  Her  language,  dress, 
motion,  manners,  soul,  and  body  are  in  a  continual 
hurry  to  be  something  more  than  is  necessary  or 
commendable.  The  first  ridiculous  airs  that  break 
from  her  are  upon  a  gallant,  never  seen  before,  who 
delivers  her  a  letter  from  her  father,  recommending 
him  to  her  good  graces,  as  an  honourable  lover. 
Here,  now,  one  would  think  that  she  might  naturally 
show  a  little  of  the  sex's  decent  reserve,  though  never 


15a  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

so  slightly  covered.  No,  sir!  not  a  tittle  of  it! 
Modesty  is  the  virtue  of  a  poor-souled  country 
gentlewoman.  She  is  too  much  a  court  lady  to  be 
under  so  vulgar  a  confusion.  She  reads  the  letter, 
therefore,  with  a  careless,  dropping  lip,  and  an  erected 
brow,  humming  it  hastily  over,  as  if  she  were  im- 
patient to  outgo  her  father's  commands,  by  making 
a  complete  conquest  of  him  at  once ;  and  that  the 
letter  might  not  embarrass  her  attack,  crack !  she 
crumbles  it  at  once  into  her  palm,  and  pours  upon 
him  her  whole  artillery  of  airs,  eyes,  and  motion. 
Down  goes  her  dainty,  diving  body  to  the  ground, 
as  if  she  were  sinking  under  the  conscious  load  of 
her  own  attractions ;  then  launches  into  a  flood  of 
fine  language  and  compliment,  still  playing  her  chest 
forward  in  fifty  falls  and  risings,  Uke  a  swan  upon 
waving  water ;  and,  to  complete  her  impertinence, 
she  is  so  rapidly  fond  of  her  own  wit  that  she  will 
not  give  her  lover  leave  to  praise  it.  Silent  assenting 
bows,  and  vain  endeavours  to  speak,  are  all  the  share 
of  the  conversation  he  is  admitted  to,  which  at  last 
he  is  relieved  from  by  her  engagement  to  half  a  score 
visits,  which  she  swims  from  him  to  make,  with  a 
promise  to  return  in  a  twinkling." 

Happy  Mrs.  Mountfort,  whom,  as  actress  and 
woman,  Gibber  has  thus  made  live  for  ever!  As 
Mrs.  Percival,  she  was  the  original  representative  of 
Nell  in  the  piece  now  known  as  "The  Devil  to 
Pay;"  as  Mrs.  Mountfort,  —  Belinda,  in  the  "Old 
Bachelor  ;  "  and  as  Mrs.  Verbruggen,  —  Charlotte 
Welldon,  in  "  Oronooko ; "  Lady  Lurewell,  in  the 
"  Constant  Couple ; "  and  Bizarre,  in  the  "  Incon- 
stant."    She  died  in  1703. 


"THEIR  FIRST  APPEARANCE  ON  THIS  STAGE"   153 

In  some  respects  Mrs,  Bracegirdle,  who  was  on  the 
stage  from  1680  to  1707,  and  subsequently  lived  in 
easy  retirement  till  1748,  was  even  superior  to  Mrs. 
Mountfort.  Mrs.  Barry  saw  her  early  promise,  and 
encouraged  her  in  her  first  essays.  In  her  peculiar 
line  she  was  supreme,  till  the  younger  and  irresistible 
talent  of  Mrs.  Oldfield  brought  about  her  resignation. 
Unlike  either  of  these  brilliant  actresses,  she  was 
exposed  to  sarcasm  only  on  account  of  her  excellent 
private  character.  Platonic  friendships  she  did  culti- 
vate ;  with  those,  slander  dealt  severely  enough ;  and 
writers  like  Gildon  were  found  to  declare,  that  they 
believed  no  more  in  the  innocency  of  such  friendships 
than  they  believed  in  John  Mandeville ;  while  others, 
like  Tom  Brown,  only  gave  her  credit  for  a  discreet 
decorum.  Gibber,  more  generous,  declares  that  her 
virtuous  discretion  rendered  her  the  delight  of  the 
town ;  that  whole  audiences  were  in  love  with  her, 
because  of  her  youth,  her  cheerful  gaiety,  her  musi- 
cal voice,  and  her  happy  graces  of  manner.  Her 
form  was  perfect.  Gibber  says,  "  She  had  no  greater 
claims  to  beauty  than  what  the  most  desirable  bru- 
nette might  pretend  to."  Other  contemporaries 
notice  her  dark  brown  hair  and  eyebrows,  her  dark, 
sparkling  eyes,  the  face  from  which  the  blush  of 
emotion  spread  in  a  flood  of  rosy  beauty  over  her 
neck,  and  the  intelligence  and  expression  which  are 
superior  to  mere  beauty.  She  so  enthralled  her 
audience  that,  it  is  quaintly  said,  she  never  made 
an  exit  without  the  audience  feeling  as  if  they  had 
moulded  their  faces  into  an  imitation  of  hers.  Then 
she  was  as  good,  practically,  as  she  was  beautiful ; 
and  the  poor  of  the  neighbourhood   in  which   she 


154  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

resided    looked    upon    her    as    a    beneficent    divin- 
ity. 

Her  performance  of  Statira  was  considered  a  justi- 
fication of  the  frantic  love  of  such  an  Alexander  as 
Lee's ;  and,  "  when  she  acted  Millamant,  all  the 
faults,  follies,  and  affectation  of  that  agreeable 
tyrant  were  venially  melted  down  into  so  many 
charms  and  attractions  of  a  conscious  beauty." 
Young  gentlemen  of  the  town  pronounced  them- 
selves in  tender  but  unrequited  love  with  her.  Jack, 
Lord  Lovelace,  sought  a  return  for  his  ardent  hom- 
age, and  obtained  not  what  he  sought.  Authors 
wrote  characters  for  her,  and  poured  out  their  own 
passion  through  the  medium  of  her  adorers  in  the 
comedy.  For  her,  Congreve  composed  his  Araminta 
and  his  Cynthia,  his  Angelica,  his  Almeria,  and  the 
Millamant,  in  the  *•  Way  of  the  World,"  which  Gib- 
ber praises  so  efficiently.  That  this  dramatist  was 
the  only  one  whose  homage  was  well  received  and 
presence  ever  welcome  to  her,  there  is  no  dispute. 
When  a  report  was  abroad  that  they  were  about  to 
marry,  the  minor  poets  hailed  the  promised  union 
of  wit  and  beauty ;  and  even  Congreve,  not  in  the 
best  taste,  illustrated  her  superiority  to  himself,  when 
he  wrote  of  her  — 

"  Pious  Belinda  goes  to  prayers 
Whene'er  I  ask  the  favour, 
Yet  the  tender  fool's  in  tears 
When  she  thinks  I'd  leave  her. 

"  Would  I  were  free  from  this  restraint, 
Or  else  had  power  to  win  her; 
Would  she  could  make  of  me  a  saint, 
Or  I  of  her  a  sinner." 


"THEIR  FIRST  APPEARANCE  ON  THIS  STAGE"   155 

The  most  singular  testimony  ever  rendered  to  this 
virtue  occurred  on  the  occasion  when  Dorset,  Devon- 
shire, Halifax,  and  other  peers,  were  making  of  that 
virtue  a  subject  of  eulogy,  over  a  bottle.  Halifax 
remarked,  they  might  do  something  better  than 
praise  her ;  and  thereon  he  put  down  two  hundred 
guineas,  which  the  contributions  of  the  company 
raised  to  eight  hundred,  —  and  this  sum  was  pre- 
sented to  the  lady,  as  a  homage  to  the  rectitude  of 
her  private  character. 

Whether  she  accepted  this  tribute,  I  do  not  know  ; 
but  I  know  that  she  declined  another  from  Lord 
Burlington,  who  had  long  loved  her  in  vain.  "  One 
day,"  says  Walpole,  "  he  sent  her  a  present  of  some 
fine  old  china.  She  told  the  servant  he  had  made  a 
mistake ;  that  it  was  true  the  letter  was  for  her,  but 
the  china  for  his  lady,  to  whom  he  must  carry  it. 
Lord  !  the  countess  was  so  full  of  gratitude,  when  her 
husband  came  home  to  dinner." 

Mrs.  Bracegirdle  lived  to  pass  the  limit  of  four- 
score, and  to  the  last  was  visited  by  much  of  the  wit, 
the  worth,  and  some  of  the  folly  of  the  town.  On 
one  occasion,  a  group  of  her  visitors  were  discussing 
the  merits  of  Garrick,  whom  she  had  not  seen,  and 
Gibber  spoke  disparagingly  of  his  Bayes,  preferring 
in  that  part  his  own  pert  and  vivacious  son,  The- 
ophilus.  The  old  actress  tapped  Golley  with  her 
fan.  "  Gome,  come,  Gibber,"  she  remarked  ;  "  tell  me 
if  there  is  not  something  like  envy  in  your  character 
of  this  young  gentleman.  The  actor  who  pleases 
everybody  must  be  a  man  of  merit."  Golley  smiled, 
tapped  his  box,  took  a  pinch,  and,  catching  the 
generosity   of    the  lady,   replied:    "Faith,   Bracey, 


156  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

I  believe  you  are  right;  the  young  fellow  is 
clever ! " 

Between  1682  and  1695,  few  actors  were  of  greater 
note  than  luckless  Will  Mountfort,  of  whose  violent 
death  the  beauty  of  Mrs,  Bracegirdle  was  the  unin- 
tentional fault.  Handsome  Will  was  the  efficient 
representative  of  fops  who  did  not  forget  that  they 
were  gentlemen.  So  graceful,  so  ardent,  so  winning 
as  a  lover,  actresses  enjoyed  the  sight  of  him  pleading 
at  their  feet.  In  the  younger  tragic  characters,  he 
was  equally  effective.  His  powers  of  mimicry  won 
for  him  the  not  too  valuable  patronage  of  Judge 
Jeffreys,  to  gratify  whom,  and  the  lord  mayor  and 
minor  city  magnates,  in  1685,  Mountfort  pleaded 
before  them  in  a  feigned  cause,  in  which,  says  Jacobs, 
"he  aped  all  the  great  lawyers  of  the  age  in  their 
tone  of  voice,  and  in  their  action  and  gesture  of  body," 
to  the  delight  of  his  hearers.  On  the  stage  he  was 
one  of  the  most  natural  of  actors ;  and  even  Queen 
Mary  was  constrained  to  allow  that,  disgusted  as  she 
was  with  Mrs.  Behn's  "Rover,"  she  could  not  but 
admire  the  grace,  ease,  intelligence,  and  genius  of 
Mountfort,  who  played  the  dissolute  hero,  sang  as 
well  as  he  spoke,  and  danced  with  stately  dignity. 
But  poor  Will  was  only  the  hero  of  a  brief  hour ;  and 
the  inimitable  original  of  Sir  Courtly  Nice  was  mur- 
dered by  two  of  the  most  consummate  villains  of  the 
order  of  gentlemen  then  in  town. 

Charles,  Lord  Mohun,  had,  a  few  years  previous  to 
this  occurrence,  been  tried  with  the  Earl  of  Warwick 
for  a  murder,  arising  out  of  a  coffee-house  brawl ;  on 
being  acquitted  by  the  House  of  Lords,  he  solemnly 
promised  never  to  get  into  such  a  difficulty  again. 


"THEIR  FIRST  APPEARANCE  ON  THIS  STAGE"  157 

But  one  Captain  Richard  Hill,  being  in  "  love  "  with 
Mrs.  Bracegirdle,  who  heartily  despised  him,  wanted 
a  villain's  assistance  in  carrying  off  the  beautiful 
actress,  and  found  the  man  and  the  aid  he  needed,  in 
Lord  Mohun.  In  Buckingham  Court,  off  the  Strand, 
where  the  captain  lodged,  the  conspirators  laid  their 
plans ;  and  learning  that  Mrs.  Bracegirdle,  with  her 
mother  and  brother,  was  to  sup  one  evening  at  the 
house  of  a  friend,  Mr.  Page,  in  Princes  Street,  Drury 
Lane,  they  hired  six  soldiers  —  emissaries  always 
then  to  be  had  for  such  work  —  to  assist  in  seizing 
her  and  carrying  her  off  in  a  carriage,  stationed  near 
Mr.  Page's  house.  About  ten  at  night,  of  the  9th  of 
December,  1692,  the  attempt  was  made;  but  what 
with  the  lady's  screams,  the  resistance  of  the  friend 
and  brother,  and  the  gathering  of  an  excited  mob, 
it  failed ;  and  a  strange  compromise  was  made, 
whereby  Lord  Mohun  and  Hill  were  allowed  to  unite 
in  escorting  her  home  to  her  house  in  Howard  Street, 
Strand.  In  that  street  lived  also  Will  Mountfort, 
against  whom  the  captain  uttered  such  threats,  in 
Mrs.  Bracegirdle's  hearing,  that  she,  finding  that  my 
lord  and  the  captain  remained  in  the  street,  —  the 
latter  with  a  drawn  sword  in  his  hand,  and  both  of 
them  occasionally  drinking  canary,  —  sent  to  Mrs. 
Mountfort  to  warn  her  husband,  who  was  from  home, 
to  look  to  his  safety.  Warned,  but  not  alarmed, 
honest  Will,  who  loved  his  wife  and  respected  Mrs. 
Bracegirdle,  came  round  from  Norfolk  Street,  saluted 
Lord  Mohun  (who  embraced  him,  according  to  the 
then  fashion  of  men),  and  said  a  word  or  two  to  his 
lordship,  not  complimentary  to  the  character  of  Hill. 
Thence,  from  the  latter,  —  words,  a  blow,  and  a  pass 


iS8  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

of  his  sword  through  Mountfort's  body,  — ■  which  the 
poor  actor,  as  he  lay  dying  on  the  floor  of  his  own 
dining-room,  declared  was  given  by  Hill  before 
Mountfort  could  draw  his  sword.  The  captain  fled 
from  England,  but  my  lord,  surrendering  to  the 
watchmen  of  the  Duchy  of  Lancaster,  was  tried  by 
his  peers,  fourteen  of  whom  pronounced  him  guilty 
of  murder ;  but  as  above  threescore  gave  a  different 
verdict,  Mohun  lived  on  till  he  and  the  Duke  of  Ham- 
ilton hacked  one  another  to  death  in  that  savage 
butchery  —  the  famous  duel  in  Hyde  Park, 

Mountfort,  at  the  age  of  thirty-three,  and  with 
some  reputation  as  the  author  of  half  a  dozen  dramas, 
was  carried  to  the  burying-ground  of  St.  Clement's 
Danes,  where  his  remains  rest  with  those  of  Lowen, 
one  of  the  original  actors  of  Shakespeare's  plays, 
Tom  Otway,  and  Nat.  Lee.  His  fair  and  clever 
widow  became  soon  the  wife  of  Verbruggen,  —  a 
rough  diamond,  —  a  wild,  untaught,  yet  not  an  un- 
natural  actor.  So  natural  indeed  was  he,  that  Lord 
Halifax  took  Oronooko  from  Powell,  who  was  origi- 
nally cast  for  it,  and  gave  it  to  Verbruggen  ;  such  was 
the  power  of  lord  chamberlains !  He  could  touch 
tenderly  the  finer  feelings,  as  well  as  excite  the  wilder 
emotions  of  the  heart.  Powell,  on  the  other  hand, 
was  a  less  impassioned  player,  who  would  appear  to 
have  felt  more  than  he  made  his  audience  feel ;  for 
in  the  original  Spectator,  No.  290,  February,  17 12, 
Powell  "  begs  the  public  to  believe,  that  if  he  pauses 
long  in  Orestes,  he  has  not  forgotten  his  part,  but  is 
only  overcome  at  the  sentiment." 

Verbruggen  died  in  1 708.  Among  his  many  origi- 
nal   characters  ^  were   Oronooko,  Bajazet,  Altamont, 


"THEIR  FIRST  APPEARANCE  ON  THIS  STAGE"   159 

and  Sullen.  He  survived  his  widow  about  five  years. 
I  think  if  she  loved  Will  Mountfort,  she  stood  in  some 
awe  of  fiery  Jack  Verbruggen  ;  who,  in  his  turn,  seems 
to  have  had  more  of  a  rough  courtesy  than  a  warm 
affection  for  her.  "  For  he  would  often  say,"  re- 
marks Anthony  Aston,  "  *  D me !  though  I  don't 

much  value  my  wife,  yet  nobody  shall  affront  her ! ' 
and  his  sword  was  drawn  on  the  least  occasion,  which 
was  much  in  fashion  in  the  latter  end  of  King  Will- 
iam's reign."  And  let  me  add  here,  that  an  actor's 
sword  was  sometimes  drawn  for  the  king.  James 
Carlisle,  a  respectable  player,  whose  comedy,  "  The 
Fortune  Hunters,"  was  well  received  in  1689,  was 
not  so  tempted  by  success  as  to  prefer  authorship  to 
soldiership,  in  behalf  of  a  great  cause.  When  the 
threatened  destruction  of  the  Irish  Protestants  was 
commenced  with  the  siege  of  Londonderry,  Carlisle 
entered  King  William's  army,  serving  in  Ireland.  In 
1 69 1  he  was  in  the  terrible  fray  in  the  morass  at 
Aghrim,  under  Ginkell,  but  immediately  led  by  Tal- 
mash.  In  the  twilight  of  that  July  day,  the  Jacobite 
general,  St.  Ruth,  and  the  poor  player  from  Drury 
Lane,  were  lying  among  the  dead ;  and  there  James 
Carlisle  was  buried,  with  the  remainder  of  the  six 
hundred  slain  on  the  victor's  side,  before  their  surviv- 
ing companions  in  arms  marched  westward. 

Carlisle's  fellow  actor,  Bowen,  was  a  "low  come- 
dian "  of  some  talent,  and  more  conceit.  A  curious 
paragraph  in  the  Post-Boy,  for  November  16,  1700, 
shows  that  he  left  the  stage  for  a  time,  and  under 
singular  circumstances.     The  paragraph  runs  thus  : 

"We  hear  that  this  day,  Mr.  Bowen,  the  late 
famous  comedian  at  the  new  playhouse,  being  con- 


i6o  THEIR  AlAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

vinced  by  Mr.  Collier's  book  against  the  stage,  and 
satisfied  that  a  shopkeeper's  life  was  the  readiest  way 
to  heaven  of  the  two,  opens  a  cane  shop,  next  door  to 
the  King's  Head  Tavern,  in  Middle  Row,  Holborn, 
where  it  is  not  questioned  but  all  manner  of  canes, 
toys,  and  other  curiosities,  will  be  obtained  at  reason- 
able rates.  This  sudden  change  is  admired  at,  as  well 
as  the  reasons  which  induced  him  to  leave  such  a 
profitable  employ;  but  the  most  judicious  conclude 
it  is  the  effect  of  a  certain  person's  good  nature, 
who  has  more  compassion  for  his  soul  than  for  his 
own." 

Bowen  was  not  absent  from  the  stage  more  than 
a  year.  He  was  so  jealous  of  his  reputation,  that 
when  he  had  been  driven  to  fury  by  the  assertion 
that  Johnson  played  Jacomo,  in  the  "  Libertine," 
better  than  he  did,  and  by  the  emphatic  confirmation 
of  the  assertion  by  Quin,  he  fastened  a  quarrel  on 
the  latter,  got  him  in  a  room  in  a  tavern,  alone,  set 
his  back  to  the  door,  drew  his  sword,  and  assailed 
Quin  with  such  blind  fury,  that  he  killed  himself  by 
falling  on  Quin's  weapon.  The  dying  Irishman,  how- 
ever, generously  acquitted  his  adversary  of  all  blame, 
and  the  greater  actor,  after  trial,  returned  to  his  duty, 
having  innocently  killed,  but  not  convinced,  poor 
Bowen,  who  naturally  preferred  his  Jacomo  to  that 
of  Johnson. 

Peer,  later  in  life,  came  to  grief  also,  but  in  a  dif- 
ferent way.  The  spare  man  was  famous  for  two 
parts  :  the  Apothecary,  in  "  Romeo  and  Juliet,"  and 
the  actor  who  humbly  speaks  the  prologue  to  the 
play  in  "  Hamlet."  These  parts  he  played  excel- 
lently well.     Nature  had  made  him  for  them;  but 


"THEIR  FIRST  APPEARANCE  ON  THIS  STAGE"  i6i 

she  was  not  constant  to  her  meek  and  lean  favourite ; 
for  Peer  grew  fat,  and  being  unable  to  act  any  other 
character  with  equal  effect,  he  lost  his  vocation,  and 
he  died,  lingeringly,  of  grief,  in  171 3,  when  he  had 
passed  threescore  years  and  ten.  He  had  been  prop- 
erty-man also,  and  in  this  capacity  the  theatre  owed 
him,  at  the  time  of  his  decease,  among  other  trifling 
sums,  "threepence,  for  blood  in  *  Macbeth.*  " 

Norris,  or  "Jubilee  Dicky,"  was  a  player  of  an 
odd,  formal,  little  figure,  and  a  squeaking  voice.  He 
was  a  capital  comic  actor,  and  owed  his  by-name 
to  his  success  in  playing  Dicky  in  the  "  Constant 
Couple."  So  great  was  this  success,  that  his  sons 
seemed  to  derive  value  from  it,  and  were  announced 
as  the  sons  of  Jubilee  Dicky.  He  is  said  to  have 
acted  Cato,  and  other  tragic  characters,  in  a  serio- 
burlesque  manner.  He  was  the  original  Scrub  and 
Don  Lopez,  in  the  "Wonder,"  and  died  about  the 
year  1733. 

Doggett,  who  was  before  the  public  from  1691  to 
171 3,  and  who  died  in  1721,  was  a  Dublin  man  —  a 
failure  in  his  native  city,  but  in  London  a  deserved 
favourite,  for  his  original  and  natural  comic  powers. 
He  always  acted  Shylock  as  a  ferociously  comic  char- 
acter. Congreve  discerned  his  talent,  and  wrote  for 
him  Fondlewife  in  the  "Old  Bachelor,"  Sir  Paul 
Pliant  in  the  "  Double  Dealer,"  and  the  very  different 
part  of  Ben  in  "  Love  for  Love."  This  little,  lively, 
cheerful  fellow,  was  a  conscientious  actor.  Some- 
what illiterate,  —  he  spelt  "  whole  "  phonetically,  with- 
out the  "  w,"  —  he  was  a  gentleman  in  his  acts  and 
bearing.  He  was  prudent,  too,  and  when  he  retired 
from  partnership  in  Drury  Lane  Theatre,  with  Cib- 


i62  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

ber  and  Wilks  (from  1709  to  171 2),  on  the  admis- 
sion of  Booth,  which  displeased  him,  he  was  considered 
worth  ;^i,ooo  a  year.  The  consciousness  of  his 
value,  and  his  own  independence  of  character,  gave 
some  trouble  to  managers  and  lord  chamberlains. 
On  one  occasion,  having  left  Drury  Lane  at  some 
offence  given,  he  went  to  Norwich,  whence  he  was 
brought  up  to  London,  under  my  lord's  warrant. 
Dogget  lived  luxuriously  on  the  road,  at  the  cham- 
berlain's expense,  and  when  he  came  to  town,  Chief 
Justice  Holt  liberated  him,  on  some  informality  in 
the  procedure. 

Little  errors  of  temper,  and  extreme  carefulness  in 
guarding  his  own  interests,  are  now  forgotten.  Of 
his  strong  political  feeling  we  still  possess  a  trace. 
Doggett  was  a  staunch  Whig.  The  accession  of  the 
house  of  Brunswick  dated  from  a  first  of  August. 
On  that  day,  in  1716,  and  under  George  L,  Doggett 
gave  "  an  orange-coloured  livery,  with  a  badge,  repre- 
senting Liberty,"  to  be  rowed  for  by  six  watermen, 
whose  apprenticeship  had  expired  during  the  preced- 
ing year.  He  left  funds  for  the  same  race  to  be 
rowed  for  annually,  from  London  Bridge  to  Chelsea, 
"  on  the  same  day  for  ever."  The  match  still  takes 
place,  with  modifications  caused  by  changes  on  and 
about  the  river  ;  but  the  winners  of  the  money-prizes, 
now  delivered  at  Fishmongers'  Hall,  have  yet  to  be 
thankful  for  that  prudence  in  Doggett,  which  was 
sneered  at  by  his  imprudent  contemporaries. 

Doggett  never  took  liberties  with  an  audience ; 
Pinkethman  was  much  addicted  to  that  bad  habit. 
He  would  insert  nonsense  of  his  own,  appeal  to  the 
gallery,  and  delight  in  their  support,  and  the  con- 


"THEIR  FIRST  APPEARANCE  ON  THIS  STAGE"   163 

fusion  into  which  the  other  actors  on  the  stage  were 
thrown ;  but  the  joke  grew  stale  at  last,  and  the 
offender  was  brought  to  his  senses  by  loud  disappro- 
bation. He  did  not  lose  his  self-possession  ;  but  as- 
suming a  penitent  air,  with  a  submissive  glance  at 
the  audience,  he  said  in  a  stage  aside,  "Odso,  I 
believe  I  have  been  in  the  wrong  here ! "  This 
cleverly  made  confession  brought  down  a  round  of 
applause,  and  "  Pin  key "  made  his  exit,  corrected, 
but  not  disgraced.  Another  trait  of  his  stage  life  is 
worthy  of  notice.  He  had  been  remarkable  for  his 
reputation  as  a  speaking  Harlequin,  in  the  "  Emperor 
of  the  Moon."  His  wit,  audacity,  emphasis,  and 
point  delighted  the  critics,  who  thought  that  **  ex- 
pression "  would  be  more  perfect  if  the  actor  laid 
aside  the  inevitable  mask  of  Harlequin.  Pinketh- 
man  did  so ;  but  all  expression  was  thereby  lost.  It 
was  no  longer  the  saucy  Harlequin  that  seemed 
speaking.  Pinkey,  so  impudent  on  all  other  occa- 
sions, was  uneasy  and  feeble  on  this,  and  his  audac- 
ity and  vivacity  only  returned  on  his  again  assuming 
the  sable  vizard. 

Pinkethman  was  entirely  the  architect  of  his  own 
fortune.  He  made  his  way  by  talent  and  industry. 
He  established  the  Richmond  Theatre,  and  there 
was  no  booth  at  Greenwich,  Richmond,  or  Mayfair, 
so  well  patronised  as  his.  "  He's  the  darling  of 
Fortunatus,"  says  Downes,  "and  has  gained  more 
in  theatres  and  fairs  in  twelve  years  than  those  who 
have  tugged  at  the  oar  of  acting  these  fifty." 

After  the  division  of  the  company  into  two,  in 
1695,  the  following  new  actors  appeared  between 
that  period  and  the  close  of  the  century.     At  Drury 


1 64  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

Lane  —  Hildebrand  Horden,  Mrs.  Gibber,  Johnson, 
Bullock,  Mills,  Wilks  ;  and,  as  if  the  century  should 
expire,  reckoning  a  new  glory,  —  Mrs.  Oldfield.  At 
Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  —  Thurmond,  Scudamore,  Ver- 
bruggen,  who  joined  from  Drury  Lane,  leaving  his 
clever  wife  there,  Pack  ;  and,  that  this  house  might 
boast  a  glory  something  like, that  enjoyed  by  its 
rival,  in  Mrs.  Oldfield,  —  in  1700  Booth  made  his 
first  appearance,  with  a  success,  the  significance 
of  which  was  recognised  and  welcomed  by  the  dis- 
cerning and  generous  Betterton. 

Mrs.  Oldfield,  Wilks,  and  Booth,  like  Colley  Gib- 
ber, though  they  appeared  toward  the  close  of  the 
seventeenth,  really  belong  to  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  I  shall  defer  noticing  them  till  my  readers  and  I 
arrive  at  that  latter  period.  The  rest  will  require 
but  a  few  words.  Young  Horden  was  a  handsome 
and  promising  actor,  who  died  of  a  brawl  at  the  Rose 
Tavern,  Govent  Garden.  He  and  two  or  three  com- 
rades were  quaffing  their  wine,  and  laughing  at  the 
bar,  when  some  fine  gentlemen,  in  an  adjacent  room, 
affecting  to  be  disturbed  by  the  gaiety  of  the  players, 
rudely  ordered  them  to  be  quiet.  The  actors  re- 
turned an  answer  which  brought  blood  to  the  cheek, 
fierce  words  to  the  lips,  hand  to  the  sword,  and  a  re- 
sulting ^^fight,  in  which  the  handsome  Hildebrand  was 
slain,  by  a  Gaptain  Burgess.  The  captain  was  carried 
to  the  Gate-house,  from  which,  says  the  Protestant 
Mercury^  he  was  rescued  at  night,  "by  a  dozen  or 
more  of  fellows  with  short  clubs  and  pistols."  So 
ended,  in  1696,  Hildebrand  Horden,  not  without 
the  sympathy  of  loving  women,  who  went  in  masks, 
and  some  without  the  vizard,  to  look  upon  and  weep 


"THEIR  FIRST  APPEARANCE  ON  THIS  STAGE"  165 

over  his  handsome,  shrouded  corse.  A  couple  of 
paragraphs  in  Luttrell's  Diary  conclude  Horden's 
luckless  story:  "Saturday,  17th  October,  Mr.  John 
Pitts  was  tried  at  the  session  for  killing  Mr.  Hor- 
den,  the  player,  and  acquitted,  he  being  no  ways 
accessory  thereto,  more  than  being  in  company  when 
'twas  done."  On  Tuesday,  30th  November,  1697, 
the  diarist  writes  :  "  Captain  Burgess,  who  killed  Mr. 
Horden,  the  player,  has  obtained  his  Majesty's 
pardon." 

Of  Mrs.  Gibber,  it  can  only  be  said  that  she  was 
the  wife  of  a  great,  and  of  Bullock,  that  he  was  the 
father  of  a  good,  actor.  To  Johnson  no  more  praise 
can  be  awarded  than  to  Bullock.  William  Mills  de- 
serves a  word  or  two  more  of  notice  than  these  last. 
He  was  on  the  stage  from  1696  to  1737,  and  though 
only  a  "  solid  "  actor,  he  excelled  Gibber  in  Gorvino, 
in  Jonson's  "Volpone;"  surpassed  Smith  in  the 
part  of  Pierre,  and  was  only  second  to  Quin,  in  Vol- 
pone himself.  His  Ventidius,  in  Dryden's  tragedy, 
"All  for  Love,"  to  Booth's  Anthony,  is  praised  for 
its  natural  display  of  the  true  spirit  of  a  rough  and 
generous  soldier.  Of  his  original  parts,  the  chief 
were  Jack  Stanmore,  in  "  Oronooko ; "  Aimwell,  in 
the  "Beaux'  Stratagem;"  Gharles,  in  the  "Busy 
Body  ;  "  Pylades,  in  the  "  Distressed  Mother ;  " 
Colonel  Briton,  in  the  "  Wonder ; "  Zanga,  in  the 
"  Revenge ;  "  and  Manly,  in  the  "  Provoked  Hus- 
band." That  some  of  these  were  beyond  his  powers 
is  certain  ;  but  he  owed  his  being  cast  for  them  to 
the  friendship  of  Wilks,  when  the  latter  was  man- 
ager. To  a  like  cause  may  be  ascribed  the  circum- 
stance of  his  having  the  same  salary  as  Betterton, 


i66  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

£,^  per  week,  and  £\  for  his  wife  ;  but  this  was  not 
till  after  Betterton's  death. 

At  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  Thurmond,  though  a  re- 
spectable actor,  failed  to  shake  any  of  the  public  con- 
fidence in  Betterton.  Of  Scudamore,  I  have  already 
spoken.  Pack  was  a  vivacious  comic  actor,  whose 
"  line "  is  well  indicated  in  the  characters  of  Brass, 
Marplot,  and  Lissardo,  of  which  he  was  the  original 
representative.  He  withdrew  from  the  stage  in  172 1, 
a  bachelor;  and,  in  the  meridian  of  life,  opened  a 
tavern  in  Charing  Cross.  I  have  now  named  the 
principal  actors  and  actresses  who  first  appeared,  be- 
tween the  Restoration  and  the  year  1701,  Betterton 
and  Mrs.  Barry  being  the  noblest  of  the  players  of 
that  half-century ;  Cibber,  Booth,  and  Mrs.  Oldfield, 
the  bright  promises  of  the  century  to  come.  It  is 
disappointing,  however,  to  find  that  in  the  very  last 
year  of  the  seventeenth  century  "  the  grand  jury  of 
Middlesex  presented  the  two  playhouses,  and  also  the 
bear-garden,  as  nuisances  and  riotous  and  disorderly 
assemblies."  So  Luttrell  writes,  in  December,  1700, 
at  which  time,  as  contemporary  accounts  inform  us, 
the  theatres  were  "  pestered  with  tumblers,  rope- 
dancers,  and  dancing  men  and  dogs  from  France." 
Betterton  was  then  in  declining  health,  and  appeared 
only  occasionally ;  the  houses,  lacking  other  attrac- 
tions, were  ill  attended,  and  public  taste  was  stimu- 
lated by  offering  the  "fun  of  a  fair,"  where  Mrs. 
Barry  had  drowned  a  whole  house  in  tears.  The 
grand  jury  of  Middlesex  did  not  see  that  with  rude 
amusements  the  spectators  grew  rude  too.  The  jury 
succeeded  in  preventing  playbills  from  being  posted 
in  the  city,  and  denounced  the  stage  as  a  pastime 


"THEIR  FIRST  APPEARANCE  ON  THIS  STAGE"   167 

which  led  the  way  to  murder.  This  last  denunciation 
was  grounded  on  the  fact  that  Sir  Andrew  Stanning 
had  been  killed  just  before,  on  his  way  from  the  play- 
house. When  men  wore  swords  and  hot  tempers, 
these  catastrophes  were  not  infrequent.  In  1682,  a 
coffee-house  was  sometimes  turned  into  a  shambles 
by  gentlemen  calling  the  actors  at  the  Duke's  House 
"papists."  What  was  the  cause  of  the  fray  in  which 
Sir  Andrew  fell,  I  do  not  know.  Whatever  it  was, 
he  was  run  through  the  body  by  Mr.  Cowlan ;  and 
that  the  latter  took  some  unfair  advantage  is  to  be 
supposed,  since  he  was  found  guilty  of  murder,  and 
in  December,  1 700,  was  executed  at  Tyburn,  with  six 
other  malefactors,  who,  on  the  same  day,  in  the  New- 
gate slang  of  the  period,  went  Westward  Ho  ! 

On  the  poor  players  fell  all  the  disgrace ;  but  I 
think  I  shall  be  able  to  show,  in  the  next  chapter, 
that  the  fault  lay  rather  with  the  poets.  These,  in 
their  turn,  laid  blame  upon  the  public ;  but  it  is  the 
poet's  business  to  elevate,  and  not  to  pander  to  a  low 
taste.  The  foremost  men  of  the  tuneful  brother- 
hood, of  the  period  from  the  Restoration  to  the  end 
of  the  century,  have  much  to  answer  for  in  this 
last  respect. 


CHAPTER   IX. 

THE   DRAMATIC    POETS 
Noble,  gentle,  and  humble  Authors 

It  is  a  curious  fact,  that  the  number  of  dramatic 
writers  between  the  years  1659-1700,  inclusive, 
exceeds  that  of  the  actors.  A  glance  at  the  following 
list  will  show  this  : 

Sir  W.  Davenant,  Dryden,  Porter,  Mrs.  Behn,  Lee, 
Cowley,  Hon.  James  Howard,  Shadwell,  Sir  S.  Tuke, 
Sir  R.  Stapylton,  Lord  Broghill  (Earl  of  Orrery), 
Flecknoe,  Sir  George  Etherege,  Sir  R.  Howard,  Lacy 
(actor),  Betterton  (actor),  Earl  of  Bristol,  Duke  of 
Buckingham,  Doctor  Rhodes,  Sir  Edward  Howard, 
Settle,  Caryll  (Earl  of  Caryll,  of  James  II. 's  creation), 
Henry  Lucius  Carey  (Viscount  Falkland),  Duke  of 
Newcastle,  Shirley,  Sir  Charles  Sedley,  Mrs.  Boothby, 
Medbourne  (actor),  Corye,  Revet,  Crowne,  Ravens- 
croft,  Wycherley,  Arrowsmith,  Nevil  Payne,  Sir  W. 
Killigrew,  Duffet,  Sir  F.  Fane,  Otway,  Durfey,  Raw- 
lins, Leanard,  Bankes,  Pordage,  Rymer,  Shipman, 
Tate,  Bancroft,  Whitaker,  Maidwell,  Saunders  (a  boy 
poet),  and  Southerne. 

Here  are  already  nearly  threescore  authors  (some 
few  of  whom  had  commenced  their  career  prior  to 
the  Restoration)  who  supplied  the  two  theatres,  be- 

16S 


THE  DRAMATIC  POETS  169 

tween  1659  and  1682,  in  which  latter  year  began  that 
"  Union,"  under  which  London  had  but  one  theatre, 
till  the  year  1695. 

Within  the  thirteen  years  of  the  Union,  appeared  as 
dramatic  writers  : 

The  Earl  of  Rochester ;  Jevon,  Mountfort,  Har- 
ris, Powell,  and  Carlisle  (actors) ;  Wilson,  Brady, 
Congreve,  Wright,  and  Higden. 

From  the  period  of  the  dissolution  of  the  Union  to 
the  end  of  the  century  occur  the  names  of  — 

Colley  Gibber  (actor),  Mrs.  Trotter  (Cockburn), 
Gould,  Mrs.  Fix,  Mrs.  Manley,  Norton,  Scott,  Doggett 
(actor),  Dryden,  Jr.,  Lord  Lansdowne  (Granville), 
Dilke,  Sir  John  Vanbrugh,  Gildon,  Drake,  Filmer, 
Motteux,  Hopkins,  Walker,  W.  Phillips,  Farquhar, 
Boyer,  Dennis,  Burnaby,  Oldmixon,  Mrs.  Centlivre 
(Carroll),  Crauford,  and  Rowe. 

In  the  above  list  there  are  above  a  hundred  names 
of  authors,  none  of  whose  productions  can  now  be 
called  stock-pieces  ;  though  of  some  four  or  five  of 
these  writers  a  play  is  occasionally  performed,  to  try 
an  actor's  skill  or  tempt  an  indifferent  audience. 

Of  the  actors  who  became  authors,  Cibber  alone 
was  eminently  successful,  and  of  him  I  shall  speak 
apart.  The  remainder  were  mere  adapters.  Of  Bet- 
terton's  eight  plays,  I  find  one  tragedy  borrowed  from 
Webster ;  and  of  his  comedies,  one  was  taken  from 
Marston  ;  a  second  raised  on  Moli^re's  George  Dan- 
din  ;  a  third  was  never  printed ;  his  "  Henry  the 
Fourth  "  was  one  of  those  unhallowed  outrages  on 
Shakespeare,  of  which  the  century  in  which  it  ap- 
peared was  prolific  ;  his  "  Bondman  "  was  a  poor  re- 
construction of  Massinger's  play,  in  which  Betterton 


170  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

himself  was  marvellously  great ;  and  his  "  Prophetess  " 
was  a  conversion  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  tragedy 
into  an  opera,  by  the  efficient  aid  of  Henry  Purcell, 
who  published  the  music  in  score,  in  1691.  There 
was  noble  music  wedded  to  noble  words,  and  for  the 
recreation  of  those  who  could  appreciate  neither, 
there  was  a  dance  of  quaint  figures,  from  whom,  when 
about  to  sit  down,  the  chairs  slipped  under  them,  took 
up  the  measure,  and  concluded  by  dancing  it  out. 

Medbourne  produced  only  his  translation  of  the 
"Tartuffe,"  Jevon  only  one  comedy.  Mountfort, 
like  Betterton,  was  an  indifferent  author.  His  "  In- 
jured Lovers  "  ends  almost  as  tragically  as  the  apoc- 
ryphal play  in  which  all  the  characters  being  killed  at 
the  end  of  the  fourth  act,  the  concluding  act  is  brought 
to  a  close  by  their  executors.  In  Mountfort's  loyal 
tragedy  all  the  principal  personages  receive  their 
quietus,  and  the  denouement  is  left  in  the  hands  of 
a  solitary  and  wicked  colonel,  with  a  contented  mind. 
"  Edward  the  Third  "  is  so  much  more  natural  than 
the  above,  that  it  is  by  some  assigned  to  Bancroft, 
while  "  Zelmani  "  is  only  hypothetically  attributed  to 
Mountfort,  on  the  ground,  apparently,  of  its  absurdi- 
ties. In  the  preface  to  his  "  Successful  Strangers," 
Mountfort  modestly  remarks,  "  I  have  a  natural  incli- 
nation to  poetry,  which  was  born  and  not  bred  in  me/' 
He  showed  small  inventive  power  in  his  bustling 
comedy,  "  Greenwich  Park,"  and  less  respect  for  a 
master  in  minstrelsy,  when  he  turned  poor  Kit  Mar- 
lowe's "  Doctor  Faustus  "  into  an  impassioned  sort  of 
burlesque,  with  the  addition  of  Harlequin  and  Scara- 
mouch to  give  zest  to  the  buffoonery ! 

Carlisle,  the  actor  who  fell  at  Aghrim,  was  the 


THE  DRAMATIC  POETS  lyi 

author  of  the  "  Fortune  Hunters ; "  and  Joseph 
Harris,  who  was  a  poor  comedian,  and  the  marrer  of 
four  adapted  and  unsuccessful  plays,  resumed,  under 
Queen  Anne,  his  original  vocation  of  engraver  to 
the  mint.  The  age  was  one  of  adapters,  whose  cry 
was  that  Shakespeare  would  not  attract,  and  accord- 
ingly George  Powell  combined  authorship  with  acting, 
and  borrowed  from  Shirley,  from  Brome,  and  from 
Middleton,  Mrs,  Pix,  and  the  romancers,  produced 
a  few  plays,  from  one  of  which  a  recent  dramatist 
has  stolen  as  boldly  as  George  himself  was  wont  to 
steal.  I  allude  to  the  "Imposture  Defeated,"  in 
which  Artan  (a  demon)  enables  Hernando,  a  physi- 
cian, to  foretell  the  fate  of  each  patient,  according  as 
Artan  takes  his  stand  at  the  foot,  or  at  the  head  of 
the  bed.  One  word  will  suffice  for  Doggett's  con- 
tribution to  stage  literature.  He  was  the  author  of 
one  lively,  but  not  edifying,  piece,  entitled  the  **  Coun- 
try Wake,"  in  which  he  provided  himself  with  a 
taking  part  called  Hob,  and  one  for  Mrs.  Bracegirdle, 
Flora.  In  a  modified  form,  this  piece  was  known 
to  our  grandfathers  as  "Flora;  or,  Hob  in  the 
Well." 

The  actors  themselves,  then,  were  not  efficient  as 
authors.  Let  us  now  see  what  the  noble  gentlemen, 
the  amateur  rather  than  professional  poets,  contrib- 
uted toward  the  public  entertainment  and  their  own 
reputation  during  the  last  half  of  the  seventeenth 
century. 

They  may  be  reckoned  at  a  dozen  and  a  half,  from 
dukes  to  knights.  Of  the  two  dukes,  Buckingham 
and  Newcastle,  the  former  is  the  more  distinguished 
dramatic  writer.     He  was  a  man  of  great  wit  and  no 


ija  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

virtue ;  a  member  of  two  universities,  but  no  honour 
to  either.  He  was  one  who  respected  neither  his 
own  wife  nor  his  neighbour's,  and  was  faithful  to  the 
king  only  as  long  as  the  king  would  condescend  to 
obey  his  caprices.  From  1627,  when  he  was  born, 
to  April,  1688,  the  year  of  his  death,  history  has 
placed  no  generous  action  of  his  upon  record,  but 
has  registered  many  a  crime  and  meanness.  He 
lived  a  profligate  peer,  in  a  magnificence  almost  Orien- 
tal; he  died  a  beggar;  bankrupt  in  everything  but 
impudence.  Dryden  and  Pope  have  given  him  ever- 
lasting infamy ;  the  latter  not  without  a  touch  of 
pity,  felt  not  at  all  by  the  former.  Historians  have 
justified  the  severity  of  the  poets ;  Gilbert  Burnet 
has  dismissed  him  with  a  sneer,  and  Baxter  has 
thrown  in  a  word  on  behalf  of  his  humanity. 

His  play  of  the  "  Chances  "  was  a  mere  adaptation 
of  the  piece  so  named  by  Beaumont  and  Fletcher. 
Plays  which  were  attributed  to  him,  but  of  which  he 
was  not  the  author,  need  not  be  mentioned.  The 
duke's  dramatic  reputation  rests  on  his  great  bur- 
lesque tragedy,  the  "  Rehearsal ; "  but  even  in  this 
he  is  said  to  have  had  the  assistance  of  Butler,  Mar- 
tin Clifford,  and  Doctor  Sprat.  Written  to  deride 
the  bombastic  tragedies  then  in  vogue,  Davenant, 
Dryden,  and  Sir  Robert  Howard  are,  by  turns,  struck 
at,  under  the  person  of  the  poet  Bayes;  and  the 
irritability  of  the  second,  under  the  allusions,  are 
perhaps  warrant  that  the  satire  was  good.  The 
humour  is  good,  too ;  the  very  first  exhibition  of  it 
excited  the  mirth  which  afterward  broke  into  peal 
upon  peal  of  laughter.  The  rehearsed  play  com- 
mences with  a  scene  between  the  royal  usher  and  the 


THE  DRAMATIC  POETS  173 

royal  physician,  in  a  series  of  whispers ;  for,  as  Mr. 
Bayes  remarks,  the  two  officials  were  plotting  against 
the  king ;  but  this  fact  it  was  necessary,  as  yet,  to 
keep  from  the  audience ! 

Mr.  Cavendish,  whose  services  in  the  royal  cause 
deservedly  earned  for  him  that  progress  through  the 
peerage  which  terminated  in  his  creation  as  Duke  of 
Newcastle,  was  the  opposite  of  Buckingham  in  most 
things  save  his  taste  for  magnificence,  in  which  he 
surpassed  Villiers.  Two  thousand  pounds  were  as 
cheerfully  spent  on  feasting  Charles  I.,  as  the  duke's 
blood  was  vainly  shed  for  the  same  monarch  in  the 
field.  He  lived  like  a  man  who  had  the  purse  of 
Fortunatus ;  but  in  exile  at  Antwerp,  he  pawned  his 
best  clothes  and  jewels,  that  he  and  his  celebrated 
wife  might  have  the  means  of  existence.  He  was 
the  author  of  a  few  plays,  two  of  which  were  repre- 
sented after  the  Restoration.  The  "  Country  Cap- 
tain," and  "Variety,"  were  composed  in  the  reign  of 
Charles  I.  The  "  Humourous  Lovers,"  and  the 
"Triumphant  Widow,"  subsequently.  These  are 
bustling  but  immoral  comedies,  suiting,  but  not  cor- 
recting, the  vices  of  the  times  ;  and  singular,  in  their 
slipshod  style,  as  coming  from  the  author  of  the 
pompous  treatise  on  horses  and  horsemanship.  Pepys 
ascribes  the  "Humourous  Lovers"  to  the  duchess. 
He  calls  it  a  "  silly  play ;  the  most  silly  thing  that 
ever  came  upon  a  stage.  I  was  sick  to  see  it,  but 
yet  would  not  but  have  seen  it,  that  I  might  the 
better  understand  her."  Pepys  is  equally  severe 
against  the  "  Country  Captain."  The  duke  seems  to 
have  aimed  at  the  delineation  of  character,  particu- 
larly  in  "  Variety,"  and  the  "  Triumphant  Widow,  or 


1^4  THEIR  MAJESTIES*  SERVANTS 

the  Medley  of  Humours,"  Johnson  grieves  over  the 
obhvion  which,  in  his  time,  had  fallen  on  these  works, 
and  later  authors  have  declared  that  the  duke's  come- 
dies ought  not  to  have  been  forgotten.  They  have 
at  least  been  remembered  by  some  of  our  modem 
novelists  in  want  of  incident. 

Of  the  three  earls,  all  of  whose  pieces  were  pro- 
duced previous  to  1680,  there  is  not  much  to  be  said 
in  praise.  The  eccentric,  clever,  brave,  inconsistent, 
contradictory  George  Digby,  Earl  of  Bristol,  he  who 
turned  Romanist  at  the  instigation  of  Don  John 
of  Austria,  and,  aiming  at  office  himself,  conspired 
against  Clarendon,  was  the  author  of  one  acted  piece, 
"  Elvira,"  one  of  the  two  out  of  which  Mrs.  Centlivre 
built  up  her  own  clever  bit  of  mosaic,  the  *•  Wonder." 
Wilmot,  Earl  of  Rochester,  in  whom  all  the  vices  of 
Buckingham  were  exaggerated ;  to  whom  virtue  and 
honour  seemed  disgusting,  and  even  the  affectation 
of  them,  or  of  ordinary  decency,  an  egregious  folly, 
found  leisure  in  the  least  feverish  hour  of  some  five 
years'  drunkenness,  to  give  to  the  stage  an  adapta- 
tion of  "Valentinian,"  by  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  in 
which  he  assigned  a  part  to  Mrs.  Barry  —  the  very 
last  that  any  other  lover  would  have  thought  of  for 
his  mistress.  The  noble  poet,  little  more  than  thirty 
years  old,  lay  in  a  dishonoured  grave  when  his  piece 
was  represented,  in  1680;  but  the  young  actress  just 
named,  gaily  alluded,  in  a  prologue,  to  the  demure 
nymphs  in  the  house  who  had  succumbed,  nothing 
loath,  to  the  irresistible  blandishments  of  this  very 
prince  of  blackguards. 

The  Earl  of  Caryll  was  a  man  of  another  spirit. 
He  was  the  head  of  the  family  to  which   Pope's 


THE  DRAMATIC  POETS  175 

Carylls  belonged,  and  being  a  faithful  servant  of 
James  II.,  in  adversity  as  well  as  in  prosperity,  the 
king  made  him  an  earl,  at  that  former  period,  when 
the  law  of  England  did  not  recognise  the  creation. 
Caryll  was  of  the  party  who  talked  of  the  unpopu- 
larity of  Shakespeare,  and  who  for  the  poet's  gold 
offered  poor  tinsel  of  their  own.  His  rhymed  drama 
of  the  "  English  Princess,  or  the  Death  of  Richard 
the  Third,"  owed  its  brief  favour  to  the  acting  of 
Betterton,  who  could  render  even  nonsense  imposing. 
His  comedy  of  "  Sir  Solomon,  or  the  Cautious  Cox- 
comb," was  "  taken  from  the  French."  The  chief 
scenes  were  mere  translations  of  Moli^re's  "  ficole 
des  Femmes ; "  but  life,  and  fun,  and  wit,  were  given 
to  them  again  by  Betterton,  who  in  tHe  comic  old 
Sir  Solomon  shook  the  sides  of  the  "house,"  as 
easily  as  he  could,  in  other  characters,  move  them  to 
wonder,  or  melt  them  to  tears. 

In  1664,  another  "lance  was  broken  with  Shake- 
speare "  by  Lord  Orrery,  the  Lord  Broghill  of  earlier 
days.  There  was  something  dramatic  in  this  lord's 
life.  He  was  a  marvellous  boy,  younger  son  of  a 
marvellous  father,  the  "great  Earl  of  Cork."  Before 
he  was  fifteen,  Dublin  University  was  proud  of  him. 
At  that  age  he  went  on  the  "grand  tour,"  at  twenty 
married  the  Earl  of  Suffolk's  daughter,  and  landed 
in  Ireland,  to  keep  his  wedding,  on  the  very  day  of 
the  outbreak  of  the  Rebellion  of  1641.  The  young 
bridegroom  fought  bravely  for  homestead  and  king, 
and  went  into  exile  when  that  king  was  slain  ;  but  he 
heeded  the  lure  of  Cromwell,  won  for  him  the  vic- 
tory of  Macroom,  rescued  him  from  defeat  at  Clon- 
piel,  and  crushed  Muskerry,  and  his  numerous  papal 


176  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

host.  From  Richard  Cromwell  Broghill  kept  aloof, 
and  helped  forward  the  Restoration,  for  which  ser- 
vice Charles  made  him  a  peer,  —  Earl  of  Orrery.  The 
earl  showed  his  gratitude  by  deifying  kings,  and  in- 
culcating submissiveness,  teaching  the  impeccability 
of  monarchs,  and  the  extreme  naughtiness  of  their 
people.  Pepys  comically  bewails  the  fact  that,  on 
going  to  see  a  new  piece  by  Orrery,  he  only  sees  an 
old  one  under  a  new  name,  such  wearying  sameness 
is  there  in  the  rhymed  phrases  of  them  all. 

Orrery's  tilt  against  Shakespeare  is  comprised  in 
his  attempt  to  suppress  that  poet's  "  Henry  V."  by 
giving  one  of  his  own,  in  which  Henry  and  Owen 
Tudor  are  simultaneously  in  love  with  Katherine  of 
France.  The  love  is  carried  on  in  a  style  of  stilted 
burlesque ;  and  yet  the  dignity  and  wit  of  this  piece 
enraptured  Pepys  —  but  then  he  saw  it  at  court,  in 
December,  1666 ;  Lord  Bellasis  having  taken  him  to 
Whitehall,  after  seeing  "Macbeth"  at  the  Duke's 
House;  "and  there,"  he  says,  "after  all  staying 
above  an  hour  for  the  players,  the  king  and  all  wait- 
ing, which  was  absurd,  saw  *  Henry  V.'  well  done  by 
the  duke's  people,  and  in  most  excellent  habits,  all 
new  vests,  being  put  on  but  this  night.  But  I  sat  so 
high,  and  so  far  off,  that  I  missed  most  of  the  words, 
and  sat  with  a  wind  coming  into  my  back  and  neck, 
which  did  much  trouble  me.  The  play  continued  till 
twelve  at  night,  and  then  up,  and  a  most  horrid  cold 
night  it  was,  and  frosty,  and  moonshine ; "  and  it 
might  have  been  worse. 

In  Orrery's  "Mustapha"  and  "Tryphon,"  the 
theme  is  all  love  and  honour,  without  variation. 
Orrery's    "Mr.    Anthony"   is  a  five-act    farce,   in 


THE  DRAMATIC  POETS  177 

ridicule  of  the  manners  and  morals  of  the  Puritans. 
Therein  the  noble  author  rolls  in  the  mire  for  the 
gratification  of  the  pure-minded  cavaliers.  Over 
Orrery's  "Black  Prince,"  even  vigilant  Mr.  Pepys 
himself  fell  asleep,  in  spite  of  the  stately  dances. 
Perhaps  he  was  confused  by  the  author's  illustration 
of  genealogical  history ;  for  in  this  play,  Joan,  the 
wife  of  the  Black  Prince,  is  described  as  the  widow 
of  Edmund,  Earl  of  Kent,  —  her  father !  But  what 
mattered  it  to  the  writer  whose  only  teaching  to  the 
audience  was,  that  if  they  did  not  fear  God,  they 
must  take  care  to  honour  the  king  ?  Orrery's  "  Alte- 
mira  "  was  not  produced  till  long  after  his  death.  It 
is  a  roar  of  passion,  love  (or  what  passed  for  it), 
jealousy,  despair,  and  murder.  In  the  concluding 
scene  the  slaughter  is  terrific.  It  all  takes  place  in 
presence  of  an  unobtrusive  individual,  who  carries  the 
doctrine  of  non-intervention  to  its  extreme  limit. 
When  the  persons  of  the  drama  have  made  an  end 
of  one  another,  the  quietly  delighted  gentleman  steps 
forward,  and  blandly  remarks,  that  there  was  so  much 
virtue,  love,  and  honour  in  it  all,  that  he  could  not 
find  it  in  his  heart  to  interfere,  though  his  own  son 
was  one  of  the  victims ! 

A  contemporary  of  Orrery,  young  Henry  Carey, 
Viscount  Falkland,  son  of  the  immortal  soldier  who 
fell  at  Newbury,  wrote  one  piece,  the  "  Marriage 
Night,"  of  which  I  know  nothing,  save  that  it  was 
played  in  the  Lent  of  1664;  but  I  do  know  that  the 
author  had  wit,  for  when  some  one  remarked,  as 
Carey  took  his  seat  in  the  House  of  Commons  for 
the  first  time,  that  he  looked  as  if  he  had  not  sown 
his  wild  oats,  he  replied,  that  he  had  come  to  the 


178  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

place  where  there  were  geese  enough  to  pick  them 
up ! 

The  last  of  the  dramatic  lords  of  this  century  was 
that  Lord  Lansdowne  whom  Pope  called  "  Granville 
the  polite,"  and  absurdly  compared  with  Surrey,  by 
awkwardly  calling  the  latter  the  "Granville  of  a 
former  age."  Granville  was  a  statesman,  a  Tory, 
a  stiff-backed  gentleman  in  a  stiff-backed  period, 
and  a  sufferer  for  his  opinions.  Driven  into  leisure, 
he  addressed  himself  to  literature,  in  connection  with 
which  he  committed  a  crime  against  the  majesty  of 
Shakespeare,  which  was  unpardonable.  He  recon- 
structed the  "  Merchant  of  Venice,"  called  it  the 
"Jew  of  Venice,"  and  assigned  Shylock  to  Doggett. 
Lord  Lansdowne's  "  She-Gallants  "  is  a  vile  comedy 
for  its  "  morals,"  but  a  vivacious  one  for  its  manner. 
Old  Downes,  the  prompter,  sneers  at  the  offence 
taken  at  it  by  some  ladies,  who,  he  thinks,  affected, 
rather  than  possessed,  virtue,  themselves.  But  ladies, 
in  1696,  were  offended  at  such  outrages  on  decency 
as  this  play  contains.  They  were  not  the  first  who 
had  made  similar  protest.  Even  in  this  lord's  tragedy 
of  "  Heroic  Love,"  Achilles  and  Briseis  are  only  a 
little  more  decent  than  Ravenscroft's  loose  rakes  and 
facile  nymphs.  The  only  consolation  one  has  in 
reading  the  "Jew  of  Venice"  (produced  in  1701) 
is,  that  there  are  some  passages  the  marrer  could  not 
spoil.  As  for  Shylock,  Rowe  expressed  the  opinion 
of  the  public  when,  in  spite  of  the  success  of  the 
comic  edition  of  the  character,  he  said,  modestly 
enough,  "  I  cannot  but  think  the  character  was  trag- 
ically designed  by  the  author."  Dryden,  Pope,  and 
Johnson,  have  in  their  turn  eulogised  Granville ;  but, 


THE  DRAMATIC  POETS  179 

as  a  dramatic  poet,  he  reflects  no  honour  either  on 
the  century  in  which  he  was  born,  or  on  that  in  which 
he  died.  Indeed,  of  the  dramatist  peers  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  there  is  not  a  play  that  has  survived 
to  our  times. 

And  now,  coming  to  a  dozen  of  baronets,  knights, 
and  honourables,  let  us  point  to  two,  —  Sir  Samuel 
Tuke  and  Sir  William  Killigrew,  who  may  claim  pre- 
cedence for  their  comparative  purity,  if  not  for  decided 
dramatic  talent.  To  the  former,  an  old  colonel  of 
the  Cavalier  times,  Charles  II.  recommended  a  com- 
edy of  Calderon's,  which  Sir  Samuel  produced  at  the 
Lincoln's  Inn  Fields  Theatre,  in  1663,  under  the  title 
of  the  "Adventures  of  Five  Hours."  The  public 
generally,  and  Pepys  especially,  were  unusually  de- 
lighted with  this  well-constructed  comedy.  When 
it  was  played  at  Whitehall,  Mrs.  Pepys  saw  it  from 
Lady  Fox's  "  pew  ; "  and,  making  an  odd  comparison, 
the  diarist  thought  "  Othello  "  a  "  mean  thing  "  when 
weighed  against  the  "  Adventures ; "  but  his  chief 
praise  is,  that  it  is  "  without  one  word  of  ribaldry ; " 
and  Echard  has  added  thereto  his  special  commenda- 
tion as  a  critic. 

Sir  Robert  Stapylton  says  of  William  Killigrew 
what  could  not  be  said  of  his  brother  Tom  (whose 
plays  were  written  before  the  Restoration),  that  in 

him  were  found  — 

"...  plots  well  laid. 
The  language  pure  and  ev'ry  sentence  weighed." 

Sir  William,  a  soldier  of  the  first  Charles's  fighting 
time,  a  courtier,  and  vice-chamberlain  to  the  queen, 
in  "  Rowley's  "  days,  was  the  author  of  four  or  five 
plays,  one  only  of  which  deserves  any  notice  here,  — 


l8o  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

namely,  his  comedy  of  "Pandora."  The  heroine  of 
this  drama,  resolving  to  cloister  herself  up  from  mar- 
riage, allows  love  to  be  made  to  her  in  jest,  and  of 
course  ends  by  becoming  a  wife  in  happy  earnest. 
The  author  had,  at  first,  made  a  tragedy  of  "  Pan- 
dora." The  masters  of  the  stage  objected  to  it  in 
that  form ;  and,  it  being  all  the  same  to  the  complai- 
sant Sir  William,  he  converted  his  tragedy  into  a 
comedy ! 

Sir  Robert  Stapylton,  himself  a  Douay  student 
converted  to  Protestantism  ;  a  cavalier,  who  turned 
to  a  hanger-on  at  court,  —  but  who  was  always  a 
scholar  and  a  gentleman,  —  has  received  more  cen- 
sure than  praise  at  the  hands  of  a  greater  critic  and 
poet  than  himself.  Pepys  took  no  interest  in  Stapyl- 
ton's  "Slighted  Maid,"  even  though  his  own  wife's 
maid,  Gosnell,  had  a  part  in  it ;  and  Dryden  has 
remarked  of  it,  with  too  much  severity,  that  "there 
is  nothing  in  the  first  act  that  might  not  be  said  or 
done  in  the  second ;  nor  anything  in  the  middle  which 
might  not  as  well  have  been  at  the  beginning  or  the 
end."  Stapylton,  like  the  wits  of  his  time,  generally, 
wrote  more  weakly  than  he  spoke.  This  was  the 
case,  too,  with  Tom  Killigrew,  of  whom  Scott  re- 
marks truly,  in  a  very  awkward  simile  ("  Life  of 
Dryden  "),  that  "  the  merit  of  his  good  things  evapo- 
rated as  soon  as  he  attempted  to  interweave  them 
with  comedy." 

But,  who  is  this  jaunty  personage,  so  noisy  at 
a  rehearsal  of  one  of  his  own  indifferent  plays  ?  It 
is  "  Ned  Howard,"  one  of  the  three  sons  of  the  dirty 
Earl  of  Berkshire,  the  first  Howard  who  bore  that 
title,  and  whom  Pepys  saw  one  July  day  of  1666, 


THE  DRAMATIC  POETS  i8i 

serving  the  king  with  liquor,  "  in  that  dirty  pickle 
I  never  saw  man  in,  in  my  life."  The  daughter  of 
this  earl  was  the  wife  of  Dryden. 

And  what  does  Ned  Howard  say  at  rehearsal  ? 
The  actors  are  making  some  objection  to  his  piece ; 
but  he  exclaims,  "  In  fine,  —  it  shall  read,  and  write, 
and  act,  and  print,  and  pit,  box,  and  gallery  it,  egad, 
with  any  play  in  Europe  !  "  The  play  fails  ;  and  then 
you  may  hear  Ned  in  any  coffee-house,  or  wherever 
there  is  a  company,  proclaiming,  by  way  of  excuse, 
that  "Mr.  So-and-So,  the  actor,  didn't  top  his  part, 
sir !  "     It  was  Ned  Howard's  favourite  phrase. 

The  old  Earl  of  Berkshire  gave  three  sons  to 
literature,  besides  a  daughter  to  Dryden ;  namely. 
Sir  Robert,  James,  and  this  Edward.  The  last 
named  was  the  least  effective.  His  characters 
"talk,"  but  they  are  engaged  in  no  plot;  and  they 
exhibit  a  dull  lack  of  incident.  The  most  of  his  six 
or  seven  dramas  were  failures  ;  but  from  one  of  them, 
which  was  the  most  original,  indecent,  and  the  most 
decidedly  damned,  Mrs.  Inchbald  condescended  to 
extract  matter  which  she  turned  to  very  good  purpose 
in  her  "Every  One  Has  His  Fault."  Edward  How- 
ard gratified  the  court  party  in  his  tragedy  of  "  The 
Usurper,"  by  describing,  under  the  character  of 
Damocles  the  Syracusan,  the  once  redoubted  Oliver 
Cromwell ;  while  Hugo  de  Petra  but  thinly  veiled 
Hugh  Peters ;  and  Cleomenes  is  said  to  have  been 
the  shadow  of  General  Monk.  Lacy  said  that  Ned 
was  "more  of  a  fool  than  a  poet ; "  and  Buckingham 
was  of  the  same  opinion. 

James  Howard  came  under  Buckingham's  censure, 
too;    and  an  incident  in  the  "English  Monsieur," 


iSa  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

which,  if  Pepys's  criticism  may  be  accepted,  was  a 
mighty  pretty,  witty,  pleasant,  mirthful  comedy,  fur- 
nished the  satirical  touch  in  the  "Rehearsal,"  where 
Prince  Volscius  falls  in  love  with  Parthenope,  as  he 
is  pulling  on  his  boots  to  go  out  of  town.  James 
Howard  belonged  to  the  faction  which  affected  to 
believe  that  there  was  no  popular  love  for  Shake- 
speare, to  render  whom  palatable,  he  arranged 
"  Romeo  and  Juliet "  for  the  stage,  with  a  double 
denouement,  —  one  serious,  the  other  hilarious.  If 
your  heart  were  too  sensitive  to  bear  the  deaths  of 
the  loving  pair,  you  had  only  to  go  on  the  succeeding 
afternoon  to  see  them  wedded,  and  set  upon  the  way 
of  a  well-assured  domestic  felicity  ! 

This  species  of  humour  was  not  wanting  in  Sir 
Robert  Howard,  —  who  won  his  knighthood  by  valour 
displayed  in  saving  Lord  Wilmot's  life,  in  the  hot 
affair  at  Cropredy  Bridge.  Sir  Robert  has  been  as 
much  pommelled  as  patted  by  Dryden.  Buckingham 
dragged  him  in  effigy  across  the  stage,  and  Shadwell 
ridiculed  the  universality  of  his  pretensions  by  a 
clever  caricature  of  him,  in  the  *'  Impertinents,"  as 
Sir  Positive  Atall.  For  the  king's  purpose,  Howard 
cajoled  the  Parliament  out  of  money ;  for  his  own 
purpose,  he  cajoled  the  king  out  of  both  money  and 
place  ;  and  netted  several  thousands  a  year  by  affixing 
his  very  legible  signature  to  warrants,  issued  by  him 
as  auditor  of  the  exchequer.  The  humour  which 
he  had  in  common  with  his  brother  James,  he  ex- 
hibited by  giving  two  opposite  catastrophes  to  his 
"Vestal  Virgins,"  between  which  the  public  were 
free  to  choose.  Sir  Robert  has  generally  been  looked 
upon  as  a  servile  courtier ;  but  people  were  astounded 


THE  DRAMATIC  POETS  183 

at  the  courage  displayed  by  him  in  his  "Great 
Favourite,  or  the  Duke  of  Lerma;"  in  which  the 
naughtiness  of  the  king's  ways,  and  still  more  that 
of  the  women  about  him,  was  shown  in  a  light  which 
left  no  doubt  as  to  the  application  of  the  satire.  His 
bombastic  periods  have  died  away  in  the  echoes  of 
them  which  Fielding  caught  in  his  "  Tom  Thumb ; " 
but  his  comic  power  is  strongly  and  admirably  mani- 
fested in  his  "Committee,"  a  transcript  of  Puritan 
life,  which  —  applied  to  Quakers,  for  want  of  better 
subjects  for  caricature  —  may  still  be  witnessed  in 
country  theatres,  in  the  farce  of  "  Honest  Thieves." 
Like  many  other  satirists,  Sir  Robert  could  not 
detect  his  own  weak  points.  In  his  "  Blind  Lady," 
he  ridicules  an  old  widow  in  desperate  want  of  a 
seventh  husband ;  and  at  threescore  and  ten  he  him- 
self married  buxom  Mistress  Dives,  one  of  the  maids 
of  honour  to  Queen  Mary. 

Of  comedies  portraying  national  or  individual  follies, 
perhaps  the  most  successful,  and  the  most  laughable, 
was  James  Howard's  "  English  Monsieur,"  in  which 
the  hero-Englishman  execrates  everything  that  is 
connected  with  his  country.  To  him,  an  English 
meal  is  poison,  and  an  English  coat,  degradation. 
The  English  Monsieur  once  challenged  a  rash  person 
who  had  praised  an  English  dinner,  and,  says  he,  "  I 
ran  him  through  his  mistaken  palate,  which  made  me 
think  the  hand  of  justice  guided  my  sword."  Is 
there  a  damp  walk,  along  which  the  Gallo-Englishman 
passes,  he  can  distinguish  between  the  impressions 
previously  left  there  by  English  or  French  ladies,  — 
the  footsteps  of  the  latter  being  of  course  altogether 
the  more  fairy-like.     "  I  have  seen  such  bonne  mine 


i84  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

in  their  footsteps,  that  the  King  of  France's  maitre 
de  danse  could  not  have  found  fault  with  any  one 
tread  amongst  them  all.  In  these  walks,"  he  adds, 
"  I  find  the  toes  of  English  ladies  ready  to  tread  upon 
one  another." 

Later  in  the  play,  the  hero  quarrels  with  a  friend 
who  had  found  fault  with  a  "pair  of  French  tops," 
worn  by  the  former.  These  boots  made  so  much 
noise  when  the  wearer  moved  in  them,  that  the 
friend's  mistress  could  not  hear  a  word  of  the  love 
made  to  her.  The  wearer,  however,  justifies  the 
noise  as  a  fashionable  French  noise  :  "  for,  look  you, 
sir,  a  French  noise  is  agreeable  to  the  ear,  and  there- 
fore not  unagreeable,  not  prejudicial  to  the  hearing; 
that  is  to  say,. to  a  person  who  has  seen  the  world." 
The  English  Monsieur,  as  a  matter  of  course,  loves 
a  French  lady,  who  rejects  his  suit ;  but  to  be 
repulsed  by  a  French  dame  had  something  pleasant 
in  it ;  "  'twas  a  denial  with  a  French  tone  of  voice, 
so  that  'twas  agreeable."  Ultimately,  the  nymph  bids 
him  a  final  adieu,  and  the  not  too  dejected  lover 
exclaims  to  a  friend:  "Do  you  see,  sir,  how  she 
leaves  us ;  she  walks  away  with  a  French  step !  " 

One  word  may  be  said  here  for  Sir  Ludovick  Car- 
lile,  the  old  gentleman  of  the  bows  to  Charles  I. 
Like  Shirley,  Killigrew,  and  Davenant,  he  had 
written  plays  before  the  time  of  the  Commonwealth ; 
and  he  survived  to  write  more,  after  the  Restoration. 
The  only  one,  however,  which  he  offered  to  the 
players  was  a  translation  of  "  Heraclius,"  by  Cor- 
neille ;  and  that  was  returned  on  his  hands.  There 
is  another  knight.  Sir  Francis  Fane,  from  whose 
comedy  of  "  Love  in  the  Dark,  "  Mrs.  Centlivre,  more 


THE  DRAMATIC  POETS  185 

clever  at  appropriation  than  Mrs.  Inchbald,  has  taken 
Intrigo,  the  man  of  business,  and  turned  him  into 
Marplot,  with  considerable  improvements ;  but  as 
Fane  himself  borrowed  every  incident,  and  did  not 
trouble  himself  about  his  language,  his  merit  is  only 
of  the  smallest  order.  He  wrote  a  fair  masque,  and 
in  his  unrepresented  "  Sacrifice "  was  little  courtier 
enough  to  make  his  Tamerlane  declare  that  "  princes, 
for  the  most  part,  keep  the  worst  company."  He 
and  Sir  Robert  Howard,  both  Tories,  could,  when  it 
pleased  them,  tell  the  truth,  like  the  plainest  spoken 
Whig. 

More  successful  than  Sir  Francis  was  rollicking 
Tom  Porter,  or  Major  Porter,  according  to  his  military 
rank.  Both  were  luckless  gentlemen ;  but  Tom 
wrote  one  play,  the  "  Villain,"  which  put  the  town  in  a 
flame,  and  raised  Sandford's  fame,  as  an  actor,  to  its 
very  highest.  Tom  was  also  the  author  of  a  rattling 
comedy,  called  the  "  Carnival,"  but  rioting,  and  bad 
company  and  hot  temper  marred  him.  He  and  Sir 
Henry  Bellasys,  dining  at  Sir  Robert  Carr's,  fell 
into  fierce  dispute,  out  of  mutual  error ;  fierce  words, 
then  a  thoughtless  blow  from  Sir  Henry,  then  swords 
crossing,  and  tipsy  people  parting  the  combatants. 
They  were  really  warm  friends ;  but  Tom  had  been 
struck,  and  honour  forbade  that  he  should  be  recon- 
ciled till  blood  had  flown.  So  Dryden's  boy  was 
employed  to  track  Bellasys,  and  the  major  came  upon 
him  in  Covent  Garden,  where  they  fought,  surrounded 
by  a  crowd  of  admirers.  Tom's  honour  was  satisfied 
by  passing  his  sword  through  the  body  of  his  dearest 
friend.  The  knight  felt  the  wound  was  mortal,  but 
he  beckoned  the  less  grievously  wounded  major  to 


i86  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

him,  kissed  him,  and  remained  standing,  that  Tom 
might  not  be  obstructed  in  his  flight.  The  friend 
and  poet  safe,  the  knight  fell  back,  and  soon  after 
died.  There  was  really  noble  stuff  in  some  of  these 
dissolute  fine  gentlemen !  But  there  are  no  two  of 
them  who  have  so  faithfully  illustrated  themselves, 
and  the  times  in  which  they  lived,  as  Sir  George 
Etherege  and  Sir  Charles  Sedley;  the  former,  a 
knight  by  purchase,  in  order  to  please  a  silly  woman, 
who  vowed  she  would  marry  none  but  a  man  of  title ; 
the  latter,  a  baronet  by  inheritance.  Sir  George, 
bom  in  1636,  was  the  descendant  of  a  good  —  Sir 
Charles,  bom  three  years  later,  a  member  of  a  better 
—  family,  reckoning  among  its  sons,  scholars  and 
patrons  of  scholars.  Sir  George  left  Cambridge  un- 
distinguished, but  took  his  degree  in  foreign  travel, 
came  home  to  find  the  study  of  the  law  too  base  a 
drudgery  for  so  free  a  spirit,  and  so  took  to  living 
like  a  "gentleman,"  and  to  illustrating  the  devilish- 
ness  of  that  career  by  reproducing  it  in  dramas  on 
the  stage. 

Sedley  left  Oxford  as  Etherege  left  Cambridge, 
ingloriously,  bearing  no  honours  with  him.  Unlike 
Sir  George,  however,  he  was  a  home-keeping  youth, 
whereby  his  wit  seems  not  to  have  suffered.  He 
nursed  the  latter  in  the  groves,  or  at  the  paternal 
hearth  at  Aylesford,  in  Kent,  till  the  sun  of  the 
restored  monarchy  enticed  him  to  London.  There 
his  wit  recommended  him  to  the  king,  won  for  him 
the  hatred  of  small  minds,  and  elicited  the  praise  of 
noble  spirits,  who  were  witty  themselves,  and  loved 
the  manifestation  of  wit  in  others.  "  I  have  heard," 
says  honest,  brilliant,  and  much-abused  Shadwell,  "  I 


THE  DRAMATIC  POETS  187 

have  heard  Sedley  speak  more  wit  at  a  supper  than 
all  my  adversaries,  putting  their  heads  together,  could 
write  in  a  year."  This  testimony  was  rendered  by  a 
man  whose  own  reputation  as  a  wit  has  the  stamp 
and  the  warrant  of  Rochester. 

Two  more  atrocious  libertines  than  these  two  men 
were  not  to  be  found  in  the  apartments  at  Whitehall, 
or  in  the  streets,  taverns,  and  dens  of  London.  Yet 
both  were  famed  for  like  external  qualities.  Etherege 
was  easy  and  graceful,  Sedley  so  refinedly  seductive 
of  manner  that  Buckingham  called  it  "witchcraft," 
and  Wilmot  "his  prevailing,  gentle  art."  I,  humbler 
witness,  can  only  say,  after  studying  their  works  and 
their  lives,  that  Etherege  was  a  more  accomplished 
comedy-writer  than  Sedley,  but  that  Sedley  was  a 
greater  beast  than  Etherege. 

These  two  handsome  fellows,  made  in  God's  image, 
marred  their  manly  beauty  by  their  licentiousness, 
and  soon  looked  more  like  two  battered,  wine-soaked 
demons,  than  the  sons  of  Christian  mothers.  Ether- 
ege, however,  fierce  and  vindictive  as  he  could  be 
under  passion,  was  never  so  utterly  brutalised  in 
mind  as  Sedley,  nor  so  cruel  in  his  humours  at  any 
time.  If  Sedley  got  up  that  groundless  quarrel  with 
Sheldon,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  the  alleged  cause 
of  which  was  some  painted  hussy,  it  was  doubtless 
out  of  the  very  ferocity  of  his  fun,  which  he  thought 
well  spent  on  exhibiting  the  prelate  as  sharing  in  the 
vices  common  at  court. 

Etherege,  perhaps,  had  the  stronger  head  of  the 
two  ;  he,  at  all  events,  kept  it  sufficiently  free  to  be 
able  to  represent  his  king  on  more  than  one  small 
diplomatic  mission  abroad.     Sedley,  who  was  never- 


l8S  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

theless  the  longer  liver  of  the  two,  indulged  in  ex- 
cesses which,  from  their  inexpressible  infamy,  betray 
a  sort  of  insanity.  When  he,  with  other  blackguards 
of  good  blood,  was  brought  to  trial  for  public  out- 
rages, which  disgusted  even  the  hideous  wretches 
that  lurked  about  Covent  Garden,  Chief  Justice  Fos- 
ter addressed  him  from  the  bench  with  a  **  Sirrah  !  " 
and  told  him,  while  the  reminiscence  of  the  plague 
and  the  smoke  of  the  Great  Fire  still  hung  over  the 
court,  that  it  was  such  wretches  as  he  that  brought 
God's  wrath  so  heavily  upon  the  kingdom.  But 
neither  the  heavy  fine  of  two  thousand  marks,  nor 
his  imprisonment,  nor  his  being  bound  over  to  keep 
the  peace  for  three  years,  nor  his  own  conscience, 
nor  the  rebuke  of  wise  men,  could  restrain  this  mis- 
creant. He  was  not  yet  free  from  his  bond  when 
he  and  Buckhurst  and  others  were  carried  off  to  the 
watch-house  by  the  night  constables  for  fighting  in 
the  streets,  drunk,  as  was  their  custom,  and  as  naked 
as  their  drawn  swords.  On  this  occasion,  in  1668, 
the  king  interfered  in  their  favour,  and  Chief  Justice 
Keeling,  servile  betrayer  of  his  trust,  let  them  go 
scatheless ;  but  he  punished  the  constables  by  whom 
they  had  been  arrested  ! 

Etherege  contributed  three  comedies  to  the  stage : 
"The  Comical  Revenge,  or  Love  in  a  Tub,"  "She 
Would  if  She  Could,"  and  the  "Man  of  Mode,  or 
Sir  Fopling  Flutter."  Sedley  wrote  the  "  Mulberry 
Garden;"  a  tragedy,  called  "Antony  and  Cleopa- 
tra," wherein  a  single  incident  in  Shakespeare's  play 
is  spun  out  into  five  acts ;  "  Bellamira,"  in  which 
comedy,  partly  founded  on  the  "  Eunuchus  "  of  Ter- 
ence, he  exhibited  the  frailty  of  Lady  Castlemain^ 


THE  DRAMATIC  POETS  189 

and  the  audacity  of  Churchill ;  a  translated  drama 
from  the  French,  called  the  "  Grumbler ; "  and  a 
tragedy,  entitled  the  "Tyrant  King  of  Crete."  Of 
all  Sedley's  pieces,  the  best  is  the  "  Mulberry  Gar- 
den," for  portions  of  which  the  author  is  indebted 
to  Moli^re's  "  Ecole  des  Maris,"  and  on  which  Pepys's 
criticism  is  not  to  be  gainsaid :  "  Here  and  there 
a  pretty  saying,  and  that  not  very  many  either." 
"  Bellamira"  is  remembered  only  as  the  play  during 
the  first  representation  of  which  the  roof  of  the 
Theatre  Royal  fell  in,  with  such  just  discrimination 
as  to  injure  no  one  but  the  author.  Sir  Fleetwood 
Shepherd  said  that  "  the  wit  of  the  latter  had  blown 
the  roof  from  the  building."  *'  Not  so,"  rejoined 
Sedley,  "the  heaviness  of  the  play  has  broke  down 
the  house,  and  buried  the  author  in  the  ruins  !  " 

Etherege's  comedies  were,  in  their  day,  the  dear 
delight  of  the  majority  of  playgoers.  I  say  the 
majority;  for  though  "Love  in  a  Tub"  brought 
;^  1,000  profit  to  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields  Theatre,  in  a 
single  month  of  1664,  and  was  acted  before  enrap- 
tured gallants  and  appreciating  nymphs,  at  White- 
hall, some  found  it  a  silly  play.  It  gave  Etherege  a 
name  and  a  position  ;  and  when  his  next  comedy 
appeared,  "She  Would  if  She  Could,"  a  thousand 
anxious  people,  with  leisure  enough  of  an  afternoon 
to  see  plays  (it  was  only  at  court  that  they  were 
acted  at  night),  were  turned  away  from  the  doors. 
To  me,  this  piece  is  very  distasteful,  and  it  is  not 
without  satisfaction  I  read  that  it  was  on  the  first 
night  "barbarously  treated,"  according  to  Dennis, 
and  that  Pepys  found  "  nothing  in  the  world  good  in 
it,  and  few  people  pleased  with  it."     The  plot  and 


190  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

denouement  he  pronounces  as  "mighty  insipid  ; "  yet 
he  says  of  the  piece  as  a  whole,  that  it  was  "  dull, 
roguish,  and  witty."  The  actors,  however,  were  not 
perfect  on  the  first  night.  Dennis  praised  the  truth 
of  character,  the  purity,  freedom,  and  grace  of  the 
dialogue,  and  Shadwell  declared  that  it  was  the  best 
comedy  since  the  Restoration,  to  his  own  time.  All 
this  eulogy  is  not  to  be  accepted.  Etherege's  third 
comedy,  the  "Man  of  Mode,"  has  been  described  as 
"perhaps  the  most  elegant  comedy,  and  containing 
more  of  the  real  manners  of  high  life,  than  any  one 
the  English  stage  was  ever  adorned  with."  In  the 
latter  respect  alone  is  this  description  true ;  but, 
though  the  piece  is  dedicated  to  a  lady,  the  Duchess 
of  York,  it  could  have  afforded  pleasure,  as  the 
Spectator  remarks,  only  to  the  impure.  People,  no 
doubt,  were  delighted  to  recognise  Rochester  in 
Dorimant,  Etherege  himself  in  Bellair,  and  the 
stupendous  ass,  Beau  Hewitt,  in  Sir  Fopling ;  but  it 
must  have  been  a  weary  delight ;  so  debased  is  the 
nature  of  these  people,  however  truly  they  represent, 
as  they  unquestionably  did,  the  manners,  bearing,  and 
language  of  the  higher  classes. 

How  they  dressed,  talked,  and  thought ;  what  they 
did,  and  how  they  did  it ;  what  they  hoped  for,  and 
how  they  pursued  it  ;  all  this,  and  many  other  exem- 
plifications of  life  as  it  was  then  understood,  may  be 
found  especially  in  the  plays  of  Etherege,  in  which 
there  is  a  bustle  and  a  succession  of  incidents,  from 
the  rise  to  the  fall  of  the  curtain.  But  the  fine  gen- 
tlemen are  such  unmitigated  rascals,  and  the  women 
—  girls  and  matrons  —  are  such  unlovely  hussies,  in 
rascality  and  unseemliness  quite  a  match  for  the  men, 


THE  DRAMATIC  POETS  191 

that  one  escapes  from  their  wretched  society,  and  a 
knowledge  of  their  one  object,  and  the  confidences 
of  the  abominable  creatures  engaged  therein,  with  a 
feeling  of  a  strong  want  of  purification,  and  of  that 
ounce  of  civet  which  sweetens  the  imagination. 

Of  the  remaining  amateur  writers  there  is  not 
much  to  be  said.  Rhodes  was  a  gentleman's  son 
without  an  estate,  a  doctor  without  practice,  and  a 
dramatist  without  perseverance.  His  one  comedy, 
"  Flora's  Vagaries  "  (1667),  gave  a  capital  part  to 
Nelly,  and  a  reputation  to  the  doctor,  which  he  failed 
to  sustain.  Corye  was  another  idle  gentleman,  who, 
in  the  same  year,  produced  his  "  Generous  Enemies," 
and  that  piece  was  a  plagiarism.  Ned  Revet  also 
exhausted  himself  in  one  comedy,  "The  Town 
Shifts,"  which  the  town  found  insipid.  Arrowship 
was  in  like  plight,  and  his  sole  comedy,  "  The  Refor- 
mation," was  obliged  to  give  way  to  Shakespeare's 
"Macbeth,"  converted  into  an  opera.  Nevil  Payne 
was  the  author  of  three  pieces :  "  Fatal  Jealousy," 
in  which  Nokes  earned  his  name  of  "  Nurse  Nokes ; " 
the  "  Morning  Ramble,"  which  was  less  attractive,  in 
1673,  than  the  "  Tempest,"  even  in  an  operatic  form, 
or  "  Hamlet,"  with  Betterton  for  the  hero ;  and  the 
"Siege  of  Constantinople,"  a  tragedy  in  which 
Shaftesbury  and  his  vices  were  mercilessly  satirised. 
Tom  Rawlins  wrote  three  poor  plays,  the  last  in  1678, 
and  he  had  as  great  a  contempt  for  the  character  of 
author  as  Congreve  himself.  He  was,  like  Joe 
Harris,  "  engraver  of  the  mint,"  kept  fellowship  with 
wits  and  poets,  wrote  for  amusement,  and  "had  no 
desire  to  be  known  by  a  threadbare  coat,  having  a 
calling  that  will  maintain  it  woolly !  "   Then  there  was 


19*  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

Leanard,  who  stole  not  more  audaciously  than  he  was 
stolen  from,  when  he  chose  to  be  original  —  CoUey 
Gibber  having  taken  many  a  point  from  the  **  Coun- 
terfeits," to  enrich  "  She  Would  and  She  Would 
Not."  Pordage  was  about  as  dull  a  writer  as  might 
be  expected  of  a  man  who  was  land-steward  to  "  the 
memorable  simpleton,"  Philip,  Earl  of  Pembroke. 
Shipman  enjoys  the  fame  of  having  been  highly  es- 
teemed by  Cowley  —  he  certainly  was  not  by  the 
public  ;  and  Bancroft,  the  surgeon,  had  the  reputation 
of  having  been  induced  to  write,  as  he  did,  unsuc- 
cessfully, for  the  stage,  because  he  prescribed  for,  or 
rather  against,  the  most  fashionable  malady  of  the 
day,  when  it  attacked  theatre-hunting  fops  and  actors 
who  stooped  to  imitate  the  gentlemen.  From  these 
he  caught  the  stage  fever,  and  suffered  considerably. 
Whitaker's  one  play,  "The  Conspiracy,"  is  remark- 
able for  the  sensational  incident  of  a  ghost  appearing, 
leading  Death  by  the  hand !  Maidwell's  comedy  of 
"  The  Loving  Enemies "  (the  author  was  an  old 
schoolmaster)  was  noticeable  for  being  "designedly 
dull,  lest  by  satirising  folly  the  author  might  bring 
upon  his  skull  the  bludgeon  of  fools."  Saunders, 
and  his  "  Tamerlane  the  Great,"  are  now  forgotten ; 
but  Dryden  spoke  of  the  author,  in  an  indecent 
epilogue,  as  "the  first  boy-poet  of  our  age;"  who, 
however,  though  he  blossomed  as  early  as  Cowley, 
did  not  flourish  as  long. 

Wilson  was  another  professional  writer,  but  less 
successful  on  the  stage  than  in  his  recordership  of 
Londonderry.  Another  lawyer,  Higden,  was  one 
of  the  j  oiliest  of  fellows :  and  wishing  the  actors  to 
be  so,  too^  he  introduced  so  many  drinking  scenes 


THE  DRAMATIC  POETS  193 

into  his  sole  play,  "The  Wary  Widow,"  that  the 
players,  who  tippled  their  real  punch  freely,  were  all 
drunk  by  the  end  of  the  third  act ;  and  the  piece  was 
then,  there,  and  thereby,  brought  to  an  end ! 

In  the  last  years  of  the  seventeenth  century,  a 
humble  votary  of  the  Muses  appeared  in  Duffet,  the 
Exchange  milliner;  and  in  Robert  Gould,  a  servant 
in  the  household  of  Dorset,  where  he  caught  from 
the  wits  and  gay  fellows  assembled  at  Knowle  or  at 
Buckhurst,  a  desire  to  write  a  drama.  He  was,  how- 
ever, a  schoolmaster,  when  his  play  of  the  "  Rival 
Sisters"  —  in  which,  other  means  of  slaughter  being 
exhausted,  a  thunderbolt  is  employed  for  the  killing 
a  lady  —  was  but  coldly  received.  Gould  was  not 
a  plagiarist,  like  Scott,  the  Duke  of  Roxburgh's 
secretary,  nor  so  licentious.  The  public  was  scandal- 
ised by  incidents  in  Scott's  "  Unhappy  Kindness,"  in 
1697.  Doctor  Drake  was  another  plagiarist,  who 
revenged  himself,  in  the  last-named  year,  for  the  con- 
demnation of  his  "  Sham  Lawyers,"  by  stating  on 
the  title-page  that  it  had  been  "damnably  acted." 
That  year  was  fatal,  too,  to  Doctor  Filmer,  the  cham- 
pion of  the  stage  against  Collier.  Even  Betterton 
and  Mrs.  Barry  failed  to  give  life  to  the  old  gentle- 
man's "  Unnatural  Brother  ; "  and  the  doctor  ascribed 
his  want  of  success  to  the  fact,  that  never  at  any  one 
time  had  he  placed  more  than  three  characters  on 
the  stage !  The  most  prolific  of  what  may  be  termed 
the  amateur  writers  was  Peter  Motteux,  a  French 
Huguenot,  whom  the  revocation  of  the  Edict  of 
Nantes  brought,  in  1660,  to  England,  where  he 
carried  on  the  vocations  of  a  trader  in  Leadenhall 
Street,  clerk  in  the  foreign  department  of  the  post- 


194  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

office,  translator,  original  writer,  dramatist,  and  "  fast 
man,"  till  the  too  zealous  pursuit  of  the  latter  call- 
ing found  Peter  dead,  in  very  bad  company  in  St, 
Clements  Danes,  in  the  year  1718.  Of  his  seventeen 
comedies,  farces,  and  musical  interludes,  there  is 
nothing  to  be  said,  save  that  one  called  "  Novelty  " 
presents  a  distinct  play  in  each  act,  —  or  five  differ- 
ent pieces  in  all.  By  different  men,  Peter  has  been 
diversely  rated.  Dryden  said  of  him,  in  reference  to 
his  one  tragedy,  "  Beauty  in  Distress : " 

^  "  Thy  incidents,  perhaps,  too  thick  are  sown; 
But  too  much  plenty  is  thy  fault  alone : 
At  least  but  two  in  that  good  crime  commit ;  — 
Thou  in  design,  and  Wycherley  in  wit." 

But  an  anonymous  poet  writes,  in  reference  to  one 
of  his  various  poor  adaptations,  "The  Island  Prin- 
cess : " 

"  Motteux  and  Durfey  are  for  nothing  fit, 
But  to  supply  with  songs  their  want  of  wit" 

How  Motteux  found  time  for  all  his  pursuits  is  not 
to  be  explained ;  but,  much  as  he  accomplished  in 
all,  he  designed  still  more  —  one  of  his  projects  being 
an  opera,  to  be  called  "The  Loves  of  Europe,"  in 
which  were  to  be  represented  the  methods  employed 
in  various  nations,  whereby  ladies'  hearts  are  trium- 
phantly won.  It  was  an  odd  idea ;  but  Peter  Mot- 
teux was  odd  in  everything.  And  it  is  even  oddly 
said  of  him,  "that  he  met  with  his  fate  in  trying 
a  very  odd  experiment,  highly  disgraceful  to  his 
memory ! " 

Hard  drinking,  and  what  was  euphoniously  called 


THE  DRAMATIC  POETS  195 

gallantry,  killed  good-tempered  Charles  Hopkins,  son 
of  the  Bishop  of  Londonderry.  Had  he  had  more 
discretion  and  less  wit,  he  might  have  prospered. 
His  tragedies,  "Pyrrhus,"  "Boadicea,"  and  "Friend- 
ship Improved,"  bear  traces  of  what  he  might  have 
done.  He  has  the  merit,  however,  of  not  being  inde- 
cent, —  a  fact  which  the  epilogue  to  **  Boadicea,"  fur- 
nished by  a  friend  and  spoken  by  a  lady,  rather 
deplores,  and  in  indecent  language  regrets  that 
uncleanness  of  jest  is  no  longer  acceptable  to  the 
town ! 

Walker  merits  notice,  less  for  his  two  pieces,  "  Vic- 
torious Love,"  and  "  Marry  or  Do  Worse,"  than  for 
the  fact  that  this  young  Barbadian  was  the  first  actor 
whom  Eton  school  gave  to  the  stage.  He  appeared, 
when  only  eighteen,  in  the  first  named  piece,  but 
quickly  passed  away  to  the  study  of  the  law  and  the  ex- 
ercise of  the  latter  as  a  profession,  in  his  native  island. 
I  know  nothing  worthy  of  record  of  the  few  other 
gentlemen  who  wrote  plays,  rather  as  a  relaxation 
than  a  vocation,  save  that  Boyer,  a  refugee  Hugue- 
not, like  Motteux,  and  a  learned  man,  adapted 
Racine's  "  Iphigenia  in  Aulis,"  for  representation ; 
that  Oldmixon  was  an  old,  unscrupulous,  party 
writer;  and  that  Crauford  was  historiographer  for 
Scotland  to  Queen  Anne,  and  has  left  no  name  of 
note  among  dramatic  writers. 


CHAPTER   X. 

PROFESSIONAL   AUTHORS 

The  men  who  took  up  dramatic  authorship  seri- 
ously as  a  vocation,  during  the  last  half  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  amount  to  something  more  than  two 
dozen.  They  begin  with  Davenant  and  Dryden ; 
include  Tate  and  Brady,  Lee  and  Otway,  Wycherley, 
Congreve,  Gibber,  and  Vanbrugh ;  and  conclude  with 
Farquhar,  and  with  Rowe. 

I  include  Sir  John  Vanbrugh  because  he  preferred 
fame  as  an  author  to  fame  as  an  architect,  and  I  in- 
sert Congreve,  despite  the  reflection  that  the  ghost 
of  that  writer  would  daintily  protest  against  it  if  he 
could.  When  Voltaire  called  upon  him,  in  London, 
the  Frenchman  intimated  that  his  visit  was  to  the 
"author."  "I  am  a  gentleman,"  said  Congreve. 
« Nay,"  rejoined  the  former,  "  had  you  been  only  a 
gentleman,  you  would  never  have  received  a  visit 
from  me  at  all." 

Let  me  here  repeat  the  names :  Davenant,  Dry- 
den, Shirley,  Lee,  Cowley,  Shadwell,  Flecknoe,  Settle, 
Crowne,  Ravenscroft,  Wycherley,  Otway,  Durfey, 
Banks,  Rymer,  Tate,  Brady,  Southeme,  Congreve, 
Cibber,  Dilke,  Vanbrugh,  Gildon,  Farquhar,  Dennis, 
and  Rowe.  The  half  dozen  in  italics  were  poets 
laureate. 

196 


PROFESSIONAL  AUTHORS  197 

All  of  them  were  sons  of  "gentlemen,"  save  three, 
Davenant,  Cowley,  and  Dennis,  whose  sires  were, 
respectively,  a  vintner,  a  hatter,  and  a  saddler.  The 
sons,  however,  received  a  collegiate  education.  Cow- 
ley distinguished  himself  at  Cambridge,  but  Dave- 
nant left  Oxford  without  a  degree,  and  from  the 
former  university  Dennis  was  expelled,  in  March, 
1680,  "for  assaulting  and  wounding  Sir  Glenham 
with  a  sword." 

Besides  Cowley  and  Dennis,  we  are  indebted  to 
Cambridge  for  Dryden,  Lee,  and  Rymer.  From 
Oxford  University  came  Davenant,  and  Settle, 
degreeless  as  Davenant,  with  Shirley,  whose  mole 
on  his  cheek  had  rendered  him  ineligible,  in  Laud's 
eyes,  for  ordination ;  Wycherley,  Otway,  Southerne, 
and  Dilke.  Dublin  University  yields  Tate  and 
Brady;  and  better  fruit  still,  Southerne,  Congreve, 
who  went  to  Ireland  at  an  early  age,  and  Farquhar. 
Douay  gave  us  Gildon,  and  we  are  not  proud  of  the 
gift. 

Lee,  Otway,  and  Tate  were  sons  of  clergymen. 
Little  Crowne's  father  was  an  Independent  minister  in 
Nova  Scotia,  and  Crowne  himself  laid  claim,  fruit- 
lessly, to  a  vast  portion  of  the  territory  there  —  un- 
justly made  over  by  the  English  Government  to  the 
French.  Cibber  was  an  artist,  on  the  side  of  his 
father  the  statuary,  and  a  "gentleman"  by  his 
mother. 

It  may  be  said  of  a  good  number  of  these  gentle- 
men that  idleness  and  love  of  pleasure  made  them 
dramatic  poets.  Shadwell,  Raven scroft,  Wycherley, 
Durfey,  Banks,  Southerne,  Congreve,  and  Rowe,  were 
all  apprenticed  to  the  law ;  but  the  study  was  one 


I9«  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

too  dull  for  men  of  their  vivacious  temperament,  and 
they  all  turned  from  it  in  disgust.  According  to 
their  success,  so  were  they  praised  or  blamed. 

The  least  successful  dramatists  on  the  above  list 
were  the  most  presumptuous  of  critics.  Rymer,  who 
was  wise  enough  to  stick  to  the  law  while  he  endeav- 
oured to  turn  at  least  Melpomene  to  good  account, 
tried  to  pursuade  the  public  that  Shakespeare  was 
even  of  less  merit  than  it  was  the  fashion  to  assign 
to  him.  In  1678,  Rymer  boldly  asserted  that  "in 
the  neighing  of  a  horse  as  the  growling  of  a  mastiff, 
there  is  a  meaning  ;  there  is  as  lively  expression,  and, 
may  I  say,  more  humanity  than  many  times  in  the 
tragical  flights  of  Shakespeare."  He  says,  that  "no 
woman  bred  out  of  a  pigsty  could  talk  so  meanly  as 
Desdemona,"  in  that  tragedy  which  Rymer  calls  "a 
bloody  farce  without  salt  or  savour."  Of  Brutus  and 
Caesar,  he  says  Shakespeare  has  depicted  them  as 
"Jack  Puddins."  To  show  how  much  better  he  un- 
derstood the  art,  Rymer  published,  in  1678,  the 
tragedy  he  could  not  get  represented,  "Edgar,  or 
the  English  Monarch."  He  professes  to  imitate  the 
ancients,  and  his  tragedy  is  in  rhyme ;  he  accuses 
Shakespeare  of  anachronisms,  and  his  Saxon  princess 
is  directed  to  "  pull  off  her  patches  !  "  The  author 
was  ambitious  enough  to  attempt  to  supersede  Shake- 
speare, and  he  pooh-poohed  John  Milton  by  speaking 
of  "  Paradise  Lost "  as  "  a  thing  which  some  people 
were  pleased  to  call  a  poem." 

Dennis  was  not  quite  so  audacious  as  this.  He 
was  a  better  critic  than  the  author  of  the  "  Foedera," 
and  a  more  voluminous  writer,  or  rather  adapter,  of 
dramatic  pieces.     He  spoke,  however,  of  Tasso,  as 


PROFESSIONAL  AUTHORS  199 

compassionately  as  the  village  painter  did  of  Titian ; 
but  his  usefulness  was  acknowledged  by  the  commen- 
tator, who  remarked  that  men  might  construct  good 
plays  by  following  his  precepts  and  avoiding  his  ex- 
amples. Boyer  has  said  something  similar  of  Gildon, 
who  was  a  critic  as  well  as  a  dramatist  —  namely, 
"  he  wrote  an  *  English  Art  of  Poetry,'  which  he  had 
practised  himself  very  unsuccessfully  in  his  dramatic 
performances." 

Cowley,  although  he  is  now  little  remembered  as  a 
dramatic  writer,  was  among  the  first  who  seized  the 
earliest  opportunity  after  the  Restoration  to  set  up  as 
playwrights  ;  but  Cowley  failed,  and  was  certainly 
mortified  at  his  failure.  He  retrimmed  a  play  of  his 
early  days,  the  "  Guardian,"  and  called  it  the  "  Cutter 
of  Coleman  Street."  All  there  is  broad  farce,  in 
which  the  Puritan  "congregation  of  the  spotless"  is 
coarsely  ridiculed,  and  cavalierism  held  up  to  admira- 
tion. The  audience  condemned  the  former  as  "  pro- 
fane," and  Cowley's  cavaliers  were  found  to  be  such 
scamps  that  he  was  suspected  of  disloyalty.  Gentle 
as  he  was  by  nature,  Cowley  was  irritable  under 
criticism,  "  I  think  there  was  something  of  faction 
against  it,"  he  says,  "by  the  early  appearance  of 
some  men's  disapprobation  before  they  had  seen 
enough  of  it  to  build  their  dislike  upon  their  judg- 
ment." "  Profane  !  "  exclaims  Abraham,  with  a 
shudder,  and  declares  it  is  enough  to  "  knock  a  man 
down."  Is  it  profane,  he  asks,  "  to  deride  the 
hypocrisy  of  those  men  whose  skulls  are  not  yet 
bare  upon  the  gates  since  the  public  and  just  pun- 
ishment of  it  ?  "  namely,  profanity.  Thus  were  the 
skulls  of  the  Commonwealth  leaders  tossed  up  in 


200  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS        4 

comedy.  He  adds,  in  a  half  saucy,  half  deprecatory 
sort  of  way,  that  "there  is  no  writer  but  may  fail 
sometimes  in  point  of  wit,  and  it  is  no  less  frequent 
for  the  auditors  to  fail  in  point  of  judgment."  Never- 
theless, he  had  humbly  asked  favour  at  the  hands  of 
the  critics  when  his  piece  was  first  played,  in  these 
words : 

"  Gentlemen  critics  of  Arg^er, 
For  your  own  int'rest,  I'd  advise  ye  here, 
To  let  this  little  forlorn  hope  go  by 
Safe  and  untouch 'd.    '  That  must  not  be ! '  you'll  cry. 
If  ye  be  wise,  it  must ;  I'll  tell  ye  why. 
There  are  7,  8,  9,  —  stay,  there  are  behind 
Ten  plays  at  least,  which  wait  but  for  a  wind 
And  the  glad  news  that  we  the  enemy  miss ; 
And  those  are  all  your  own,  if  you  spare  this. 
Some  are  but  new-trimm'd  up,  others  quite  new. 
Some  by  known  shipwrights  built,  and  others  too 
By  that  great  author  made,  whoe'er  he  be. 
That  styles  himself  «  Person  of  Quality.'  " 

The  "  Cutter "  rallied  a  little,  and  then  was  laid 
aside ;  but  some  of  its  spars  were  carried  off  by  later 
gentlemen,  who  have  piqued  themselves  on  their 
originality.  Colonel  Jolly's  advice  to  the  bully, 
Cutter,  if  he  would  not  be  known,  to  "  take  one  more 
disguise  at  last,  and  put  thyself  in  the  habit  of  a 
gentleman,"  has  been  quoted  as  the  wit  of  Sheridan, 
who  took  his  Sir  Anthony  Absolute  from  Truman, 
Senior.  And  when  Cowley  made  Aurelia  answer  to 
the  inquiry,  if  she  had  looked  in  Lucia's  eye,  that  she 
had,  and  that  "there  were  pretty  babies  in  it,"  he 
little  thought  that  there  would  rise  a  Tom  Moore  to 
give  a  turn  to  the  pretty  idea  and  spoil  it,  as  he  has 
done,  in  the  "  Impromptu,"  in  "  Little's  Poems." 


PROFESSIONAL  AUTHORS  20  x 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  circumstances  in 
Cowley's  character,  considering  how  he  distinguished 
himself  at  college,  is  that  he  never  thoroughly  under- 
stood the  rules  of  grammar ;  and  that  in  seriously 
setting  up  for  a  dramatic  author,  he  took,  like  Dry- 
den,  the  course  in  which  he  acquired  the  least  honour. 
When  Charles  II.,  on  hearing  of  Cowley's  death,  de- 
clared that  he  had  not  left  a  better  man  behind  him 
in  England,  the  king  was,  assuredly,  not  thinking  of 
the  poet  as  a  dramatist. 

Several  of  Cowley's  contemporaries,  who  were  con- 
sidered better  men  by  some  judges,  were  guilty  of 
an  offence  from  which  he  was  entirely  free.  That 
offence  consisted  in  their  various  attempts  to  im- 
prove Shakespeare,  by  lowering  him  to  what  they 
conceived  to  be  the  taste  of  the  times.  Davenant 
took  "Measure  for  Measure,"  and  "Much  Ado 
About  Nothing,"  and  manipulated  them  into  one 
absurd  comedy,  the  "  Law  Against  Lovers."  He 
subsequently  "  improved"  *'  Macbeth  "  and  "  Julius 
Caesar ;  "  and  Dry  den,  who  with  at  least  some  show  of 
reason  rearranged  "Troilus  and  Cressida,"  united  with 
Davenant  in  a  sacrilegious  destruction  of  all  that  is 
beautiful  in  the  "  Tempest."  Nat.  Lee,  who  was 
accounted  mad,  had  at  least  sense  enough  to  refrain 
from  marring  Shakespeare.  Shadwell  corrected  the 
great  poet's  view  of  "  Timon  of  Athens,"  which,  as 
he  not  too  modestly  observed,  he  "made  into  a 
play ; "  but,  with  more  modesty  in  the  epilogue,  he 
asked  for  forgiveness  for  his  own  part,  for  the  sake 
of  the  portion  that  was  Shakespeare's.  Crowne, 
more  impudently,  remodelled  two  parts  of  "  Henry 
VI.,"   with   some   affectation  of   reverence   for   the 


202  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

original  author,  and  a  bold  assertion  of  his  own  origi- 
nal merits  with  regard  to  some  portions  of  the  play. 
Crowne's  originality  is  shown  in  making  Clifford 
swear  like  a  drunken  tapster,  and  in  affirming  that  a 
king  is  a  king  —  sacred,  and  not  to  be  even  thought 
ill  of,  let  him  be  never  so  hateful  a  miscreant.  - 
Ravenscroft,  in  his  "  Titus  Andronicus,"  only  piled 
the  agony  a  little  more  solidly  and  comically,  and  can 
be  hardly  said  to  have  thereby  molested  Shakespeare. 
There  was  less  excuse  for  Otway,  who,  not  caring  to 
do  as  he  pleased  with  a  doubtful  play,  ruthlessly 
seized  "  Romeo  and  Juliet,"  stripped  the  lovers  of 
their  romance,  clapped  them  into  a  classical  costume, 
and  converted  the  noble  but  obstinate  houses  of 
Capulet  and  Montague  into  riotous  followers  of  Marius 
and  Sylla  —  Caius  Marius  the  younger  wishing  he 
were  a  glove  upon  the  hand  of  Lavinia  Metella,  and  a 
sententious  Sulpitius  striving  in  vain  to  be  as  light 
and  sparkling  as  Mercutio.  Tate's  double  rebuke  to 
Shakespeare,  in  altering  his  "  King  Lear,"  and  "  Co- 
riolanus,"  was  a  small  offence  compared  with  Otway's 
assault.  He  undertook,  as  he  says,  to  "  rectify  what 
was  wanting ;  "  and  accordingly,  he  abolishes  the 
faithful  fool,  makes  a  pair  of  silly  lovers  of  Edgar 
and  Cordelia,  and  converts  the  solemn  climax  into 
comedy,  by  presenting  the  old  king  and  his  matchless 
daughter,  hand  in  hand,  alive  and  merry,  as  the  cur- 
tain descends.  Tate  smirkingly  maintained  that  he 
wrought  into  perfection  the  rough  and  costly  material 
left  by  Shakespeare.  "  In  my  humble  opinion,"  said 
Addison,  "it  has  lost  half  its  beauty;"  and  yet 
Tate's  version  kept  its  place  for  many  years !  — 
though  not  so  long  as  Cibber's  version  of  "  Richard 


PROFESSIONAL  AUTHORS  ^  90$ 

III.,"  which  was  constructed  out  of  Shakespeare, 
with  more  regard  for  the  actor  than  respect  for  the 
author. 

In  the  last  year  of  the  century,  the  last  attempt  to 
improve  that  inefficient  poet  was  made  by  Gildon, 
who  produced  at  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields  his  idea  of 
what  "  Measure  for  Measure  "  should  be,  by  omitting 
all  the  comic  characters,  introducing  music  and  danc- 
ing, transposing  incidents,  adding  much  nonsense  of 
his  own  to  that  of  Davenant,  and  sprinkling  all  with 
an  assortment  of  blunders,  amusing  enough  to  make 
some  compensation  for  the  absence  of  the  comic 
characters  in  the  original  play. 

It  seemed  to  be  the  idea  of  these  men,  that  it  were 
wise  to  reduce  Shakespeare  to  the  capacities  of  those 
who  could  appreciate  him.  There  were  unhappy  per- 
sons thus  afflicted.  Even  Mr.  Pepys  speaks  of 
"Henry  VIII."  as  "a  simple  thing,  made  up  of  a 
great  many  patches."  The  "Tempest,"  he  thinks, 
"  has  no  great  wit  —  but  yet  good,  above  ordinary 
plays."  "Othello"  was  to  him  "a  mean  thing," 
compared  with  the  last  new  comedy  by  another 
author.  "  Twelfth  Night,"  "  one  of  the  weakest  plays 
I  ever  saw  on  the  stage."  "Macbeth,"  he  liked  or 
disliked,  according  to  the  humour  of  the  hour  ;  but 
there  was  a  "  divertissement  "  in  it,  which  struck  him 
as  being  a  droll  thing  in  tragedy,  but  in  this  case 
proper  and  natural !  Finally,  he  records,  in  1662,  of 
the  "Midsummer-Night's  Dream,"  which  he  "had 
never  seen  before,  nor  ever  shall  again,"  that  "it  is 
the  most  insipid,  ridiculous  play  that  I  ever  saw 
in  my  life." 

Of  the  characteristics  of  the  chief  of  these  dram- 


2 ©4  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

atists,  it  may  be  said,  first  of  Davenant,  that,  if  he 
was  quick  of  fancy  and  careful  in  composition,  the 
result  is  not  answerable  to  the  labour  expended  on  it. 
One  of  the  pleasantest  features  about  Dryden  was, 
that  as  he  grew  old,  he  increased  in  power ;  but  his 
heart  was  untouched  by  his  own  magic,  and  he  was 
but  a  cold  reader  of  the  best  of  his  own  works.  Lee, 
as  tender  and  impassioned  as  he  is  often  absurd  and 
bombastic,  was  an  exquisite  reader  of  what  he  wrote, 
his  heart  acknowledging  the  charm.  Shadwell's 
characters  have  the  merit  of  being  well  conceived, 
and  strongly  marked  ;  and  Shirley  (a  poet  belonging 
to  an  earlier  period)  has  only  a  little  above  the  meas- 
ure  of  honour  due  to  him,  when  he  is  placed  on  a 
level  with  Fletcher.  Crowne  is  more  justly  placed 
in  the  third  rank  of  dramatists;  but  he  had  origi- 
nality, lacking  the  power  to  give  it  effect.  Ravens- 
croft  had  neither  invention  nor  expression ;  yet  he 
was  a  most  prolific  writer,  a  caricaturist,  but  without 
truth  or  refinement ;  altogether  unclean.  Wycherley, 
on  the  other  hand,  was  admirable  for  the  epigram- 
matic turn  of  his  stage  conversations,  the  aptness  of 
his  illustrations,  the  acuteness  of  his  observation,  the 
richness  of  his  character-painting,  and  the  smartness 
of  his  satire ;  in  the  indulgence  or  practice  of  all 
which,  however,  the  action  of  the  drama  is  often 
impeded,  that  the  audience  may  enjoy  a  shower  of 
sky-rockets. 

Pope  said  that  Wycherley  was  inspired  by  the 
Muses  with  the  wit  of  Plautus.  He  had,  indeed, 
"Plautus's  wit,"  and  an  obscenity  rivalling  that  of 
**  Curculio ; "  but  he  had  none  of  the  pathos  which 
is  to  be  found  in  the  "Rudens."     But  Wycherley 


PROFESSIONAL  AUTHORS  205 

was  also  described  as  having  the  "  art  of  Terence  and 
Menander's  fire."  If,  by  the  first,  Pope  meant  skill 
in  invention  of  plot,  Wycherley  surpassed  the  Cartha- 
ginian ;  and  as  to  "  Menander's  fire,"  in  Wycherley 
it  was  no  purifying  fire ;  and  Wesley  was  not  likely 
to  illustrate  a  sermon  by  a  quotation  from  Wycherley, 
as  St.  Paul  did  by  citing  a  line  from  Menander. 

We  are  charmed  by  the  humour  of  Wycherley; 
but  after  that,  posterity  disagrees  with  Pope's  verdict. 
We  are  not  instructed  by  the  sense  of  Wycherley, 
nor  swayed  by  his  judgment,  nor  warmed  honestly 
by  his  spirit ;  his  unblushing  profligacy  ruins  all. 
But  if  his  men  and  women  are  as  coarse  as  Etherege's 
or  Sedley's,  they  are  infinitely  more  clever  people ; 
so  clever,  indeed,  that  Sheridan  has  not  been  too 
proud  to  borrow  "good  things"  from  some  of  them. 
Wycherley  is  perhaps  more  natural  and  consistent 
than  Congreve,  whose  Jeremy  speaks  like  an  oracle, 
and  is  as  learned,  though  not  so  nasty  as  his  master. 
It  may  be,  that  for  a  man  to  enjoy  Congreve's  wit, 
he  should  be  as  witty  as  Congreve.  To  me,  it  seems 
to  shine  at  best  but  as  a  brilliant  on  a  dirty  finger. 
As  for  his  boasted  originality,  Valentine  and  Trap>- 
bois  are  Don  Juan  and  M.  Dimanche ;  and  as  for 
Valentine,  as  the  type  of  a  gentleman,  his  similes 
smack  more  of  the  stable-yard  than  the  drawing- 
room  ;  and  there  is  more  of  impertinent  prattle 
generally  among  his  characters  than  among  those  of 
Wycherley.  His  ladies  are  a  shade  more  elegant 
than  those  of  the  latter  poet ;  but  they  are  mere 
courtesans,  brilliant,  through  being  decked  with 
diamonds  ;  but  not  a  jot  the  more  virtuous  or  attract- 
ive on  that  account.     Among   the  comedy-writers 


2o6  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

of  this  half  century,  however,  Congreve  and  Wycher- 
ley  stand  supreme ;  they  were  artists ;  too  many  of 
their  rivals  or  successors  were  but  coarse  daubers. 

In  coarseness  of  sentiment  the  latter  could  not  go 
beyond  their  prototypes ;  and  in  the  expression  of  it, 
they  had  neither  the  wit  of  their  greatest,  nor 
the  smartness  of  their  less  famous  masters.  This 
coarseness  dates,  however,  from  earlier  days  than 
those  of  the  Restoration ;  and  Dryden,  who  remem- 
bered the  immorality  of  Webster's  comedies,  seems 
to  have  thought  that  the  Restoration  was  to  give  the 
old  grossness  to  the  stage,  as  well  as  a  new  king  to 
the  country.  It  is,  nevertheless,  certain  that  a  large 
portion  of  the  public  protested  against  this  return  to 
an  evil  practice,  and  hissed  his  first  piece,  "The 
Wild  Gallant,"  played  in  the  little  theatre  in  Vera 
Street,  Drury  Lane,  in  1 662.  "  It  was  not  indecent 
enough  for  them,"  said  the  poet,  who  promised  "not 
to  offend  in  the  way  of  modesty  again."  His  "  Kind 
Keeper,  or  Mr.  Limberham,"  under  which  name  the 
Duke  of  Lauderdale  is  said  to  have  been  satirised, 
and  which  Dryden  held  to  be  his  best  comedy,  was 
utterly  condemned.  "  Ah  !  "  said  he,  *'  it  was  damned 
by  a  cabal  of  keepers ! "  It  never  occurred  to  him 
that  the  public  might  prefer  wit  to  immorality.  Long 
before,  he  had  written  an  unseemly  piece,  called 
"  The  Rival  Ladies,"  he  seasoned  it  in  what  he  main- 
tained was  the  taste  of  the  town,  and  in  a  prologue 
—  prologues  then  were  often  savagely  defiant  of  the 
opinions  of  the  audience,  —  asserted  his  own  judg- 
ment by  saying : 

"  He's  bound  to  please,  not  to  write  well,  and  knows 
There  is  a  mode  in  plays  as  well  as  clothes." 


PROFESSIONAL  AUTHORS  207 

I  do  not  know  how  true  it  may  be  that  Dryden, 
the  coarsest  of  dramatic  writers,  was  "  the  modestest 
of  men  in  conversation  ; "  but  I  have  small  trust  in 
the  alleged  purity  of  a  writer  who  stooped  to  gratify 
the  baser  feelings  of  an  audience,  according  to  their 
various  degrees ;  who  could  compose  for  one  class 
the  filthy  dish  served  up  in  his  "  Wild  Gallant,"  and 
for  another  the  more  dangerous,  if  more  refined,  fare 
for  youthful  palates,  so  carefully  manipulated  in  the 
Alexis  and  Caelia  song,  in  his  "  Marriage  k  la  Mode." 

We  must  not  forget,  indeed,  that  the  standard  of 
morals  was  different  at  that  time  from  what  it  is  now. 
Later  in  the  half  century,  Jeremy  Collier  especially 
attacked  Congreve  and  Wycherley,  as  men  who 
applied  their  natural  gifts  to  corrupt  instead  of  purify 
the  stage.  The  public,  too,  were  scandalised  at  pas- 
sages in  Congreve's  "  Double  Dealer,"  a  comedy  of 
which  the  author  said  "the  mechanical  part  was 
perfect,"  The  play  was  not  a  success,  and  the  fault 
was  laid  to  its  gross  innuendoes,  and  its  plainer  in- 
decency. "  I  declare,"  says  the  author,  in  the  pref- 
ace, "that  I  took  a  particular  care  to  avoid  it,  and 
if  they  find  any,  it  is  of  their  own  making,  for  I  did 
not  design  it  to  be  so  understood." 

This  point,  on  which  the  author  and  the  public 
were  at  issue,  proves  that  on  the  part  of  the  latter 
the  standard  was  improving  —  for  Congreve  is  deep 
in  the  mire  before  the  first  scene  is  over.  He  had 
looked  for  censure  for  other  offence,  and  says  in  his 
usual  lofty  manner  with  the  critics:  "I  would  not 
have  anybody  imagine  that  I  think  this  play  without 
its  faults,  for  I  am  conscious  of  several,  and  ready 
to  own  'em  ;  but  it  shall  be  to  those  who  are  able  to 


2o8  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

find  'em  out."  This  is  not  ill  said.  For  the  critics 
there  was  at  least  as  much  contempt  as  fear.  In 
"The  Country  Wife,"  Wycherley  speaks  of  "the 
most  impudent  of  creatures,  an  ill  poet,  or  what  is 
yet  more  impudent,  a  second-hand  critic ! "  The 
less  distinguished  writers  were,  of  course,  severer 
still  against  the  critics. 

In  later  years,  Sheridan  expressed  the  greatest 
contempt  for  such  part  of  the  public  as  found  that 
the  grossness  of  Congreve  was  not  compensated  for 
by  his  wit.  Sheridan  avowed  that  Congreve  must 
be  played  unmutilated  or  be  shelved.  He  compared 
his  great  predecessor  to  a  horse  whose  vice  is  cured 
at  the  expense  of  his  vigour. 

Sheridan  must,  nevertheless,  have  felt  that  he  was 
in  error  with  regard  to  these  old  authors.  In  his 
"  Trip  to  Scarborough,"  which  is  an  entire  recasting 
of  Vanbrugh's  "  Relapse,"  he  makes  Loveless  (Smith) 
say,  "  It  would  surely  be  a  pity  to  exclude  the  pro- 
ductions of  some  of  our  best  writers  for  want  of  a 
little  wholesome  pruning,  which  might  be  effected 
by  any  one  who  possessed  modesty  enough  to  be- 
lieve that  we  should  preserve  all  we  can  of  our 
deceased  authors,  at  least,  till  they  are  outdone  by 
the  living  ones." 

Dryden  said  of  Congreve's  *'  Double  Dealer,"  that 
though  it  was  censured  by  the  greater  part  of  the 
town,  it  was  approved  of  by  those  best  qualified  to 
judge.  The  people  who  had  a  sense  of  decency 
were  derided  by  Dryden ;  they  were  angry,  he  insin- 
uated, only  because  the  satire  touched  them  nearly. 
Applying  the  grossest  terms  to  women,  in  a  letter 
to  Walsh,  he  protests  that  they  are  incensed  because 


PROFESSIONAL  AUTHORS  209 

Congreve  exposes  their  vices,  and  that  the  gallants 
are  equally  enraged  because  their  vices,  too,  are 
exposed ;  but  even  if  it  were  true  that  Congreve 
copied  from  nature,  it  is  also  true  that  he  laughs 
with  his  vicious  and  brilliant  bad  men  and  women, 
makes  a  joke  of  vice,  and  never  attempts  to  correct  it. 

Dryden,  as  an  erst  Westminster  boy  and  Cambridge 
man,  may  have  felt  some  annoyance  on  the  exposure 
of  his  false  quantity  in  the  penultimate  of  •'  Cleom- 
enes,"  but  to  a  pert,  coffee-house  fop,  who  pre- 
sumed to  review  his  tragedy  of  that  name,  he  could 
deliver  a  crushing  reply.  In  that  play  Cleomenes 
virtuously  resists  the  blandishments  of  Cassandra. 
"  Had  I  been  left  alone  with  a  young  beauty,"  said  a 
stripling  critic  to  glorious  John,  "  I  would  not  have 
spent  my  time  like  your  Spartan."  "  That,  sir,"  said 
Dryden,  "  perhaps  is  true ;  but  give  me  leave  to  tell 
you,  you  are  no  hero  ! "  Good  as  this  is,  Lee  said 
even  a  better  thing  to  the  coxcomb  who  visited  him 
in  Bedlam,  during  Lee's  four  years'  sojourn  there. 
"  It  is  an  easy  thing,"  observed  this  fellow,  "  to 
write  like  a  madman."  "No,"  answered  Lee,  "it 
is  not  an  easy  thing  to  write  like  a  madman ;  but 
it  is  very  easy  to  write  like  a  fool." 

Dryden,  however,  could  criticise  himself  with 
justness.  He  confessed  that  he  was  not  qualified  to 
write  comedies.  He  saw,  too,  the  defects  in  his 
tragedies.  He  was  ashamed  of  his  "  Tyrannic  Love," 
and  laughed  at  the  rant  and  fustian  of  his  Maximin. 
He  allowed  that  in  his  "  Conquest  of  Granada  "  the 
sublimity  burst  into  burlesque,  and  he  could  censure 
the  extravagance  of  Almanzer  as  freely  as  he  did 
the  bombast  of  Maximin.     Still  he  was  uneasy  under 


210  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

censure  ;  he  was  disappointed  at  the  reception  given 
to  his  "Assignation,"  and  complained  bitterly  of  the 
critics,  especially  of  Settle.  His  best  defender  was 
Charles  II.  Some  courtiers  ventured  to  wonder  at 
the  king  going  so  often  to  see  "The  Spanish  Friar," 
as  the  piece  was  a  wholesale  robbery.  "Odds  fish  !  " 
exclaimed  Charles,  "  select  me  another  such  a  comedy, 
and  I'll  go  and  see  it  as  often  as  I  do  'The  Spanish 
Friar.' "  "  All  for  Love  "  is  Dryden's  most  care- 
fully written  play,  and  the  author  repeatedly  de- 
clared that  the  scene  in  Act  i,  between  Anthony  and 
Venditius,  was  superior  to  anything  he  had  ever 
composed. 

Dryden  attributed  whatever  merit  he  had  as  a 
writer  of  prose  to  having  studied  the  works  of  Tillot- 
son,  and  the  prelate,  it  will  be  remembered,  owed 
some  of  his  graces  of  delivery  to  Betterton.  In  his 
comedies,  Dryden  was  the  encourager,  not  the  scour- 
ger,  of  the  vice  ;  and  yet  he  could  warmly  approve 
the  purity  of  Southerne,  when  Southerne  chose  to  be 
pure,  and  acknowledged  that  it  were  as  politic  to 
silence  vicious  poets  as  seditious  preachers.  If 
there  were  few  good  poets  in  his  day,  Dryden  sees 
the  cause  in  the  turbulence  of  the  times ;  and  if 
people  loved  the  stilted  nonsense  of  heroic  tragedies, 
it  was  simply,  he  says,  because  "  the  fashion  was  set 
them  by  the  court."  To  court  protection,  he  himself 
owed  much,  and  he  states,  what  one  may  smile  at 
now,  that  the  king's  kindness,  in  calling  the  "  Maiden 
Queen  "  his  play,  —  that  singular  piece,  in  which 
there  are  eight  women  and  three  men,  —  saved  the 
drama  from  the  malice  of  the  poet's  enemies.  There 
is  no  such  privilege  for  poets,  in  our  days ! 


PROFESSIONAL  AUTHORS  ail 

Had  Shadwell,  who  left  the  law  to  find  a  livelihood 
by  literature,  not  been  a  Whig,  we  should  have 
heard  less  of  him  in  parallels  or  contrasts  with  Dry- 
den.  Of  his  dramatic  pieces,  amounting  to  about 
a  dozen  and  a  half,  there  is  scarcely  one  that  does 
not  please  more  in  perusal  than  any  by  the  poet 
of  the  greater  name,  —  always  excepting  Dryden's 
"  Love  for  Love."  Shadwell's  "  Squire  of  Alsatia," 
♦'  Bury  Fair,"  "  Epsom  Wells,"  and  some  others, 
were  necessarily  favourites  with  his  public,  as  they 
are  good  character  comedies,  brisk  with  movement 
and  incident.  For  attacking  Dryden's  "  Duke  of 
Guise,"  Dryden  pilloried  the  assailant  for  ever,  as 
"  Mac  Flecnoe  ;  "  but  when  he  says  that  "  Shadwell 
never  deviates  into  sense,"  he  has  as  little  foundation 
for  his  assertion  as  he  has  for  his  contempt  of  Wil- 
mot,  when  he  says  in  the  "Essay  upon  Satire," 
"  Rochester  I  despise  for  want  of  wit."  Rochester 
may  have  praised  Shadwell  because  he  hated  Dry- 
den ;  but  Dryden's  aspersions  on  the  other  two  spring 
decidedly  more  from  his  passion  than  his  judgment. 
To  Shadwell  was  given  the  laureateship  of  which 
Dryden  was  deprived.  The  latter  would  have  borne 
the  deprivation  better  if  the  laurel  crown  had  fallen 
on  another  head,  as  he  sings  to  Congreve : 

"  Oh  that  your  brows  my  laurel  had  sustained ; 
Well  had  I  been  depos'd,  if  you  had  reigned  1 " 

In  one  respect,  Dryden  was  no  match  at  all  for 
Shadwell;  and,  indeed,  he  has,  inadvertently,  con- 
fessed as  much.  When  speaking  of  his  incapacity 
for  writing   comedy,  he  says,  "I  want  that   gaiety 


212  THEIR  MAJESTIES*  SERVANTS 

of  humour  which  is  required  in  it ;  my  conversation 
slow  and  dull ;  my  humour  saturine  and  reserved. 
In  short,  I  am  none  of  those  who  endeavour  to  break 
jests  in  company,  and  endeavour  to  make  repartees ; 
so  that  those  who  decry  my  comedies  do  me  no 
injury,  except  it  be  in  point  of  profit ;  reputation  in 
them  is  the  last  thing  to  which  I  shall  pretend." 
This  is  the  picture  of  a  dull  man,  of  which  Shadwell, 
whose  comedies,  to  say  the  least  of  them,  have  as 
much  merit  as  Dryden's,  was  the  exact  opposite. 
He  was  a  most  brilliant  talker ;  and  Rochester  re- 
marked of  him  that  even,  had  Shadwell  burnt  all  he 
wrote,  and  only  printed  all  he  spoke,  his  wit  and 
humour  would  be  found  to  exceed  that  of  any  other 
poet. 

We  come,  however,  to  a  greater  than  Shadwell,  in 
Sir  John  Vanbrugh,  who  belongs  to  two  centuries, 
and  who  was  a  man  of  many  occupations,  but  a 
dramatist  by  predilection.  He  was  architect,  poet, 
wit,  herald ;  he  stole  some  of  his  plots  ;  and  he  sold 
his  office  of  Clarencieux,  to  which  he  had  been  ap- 
pointed, because  he  was  a  successful  playwright. 
He  had  humour,  and  was  exceedingly  coarse ;  but, 
says  Schlegel,  *'  under  Queen  Anne,  manners  became 
again  more  decorous ;  and  this  may  be  easily  traced  in 
the  comedies.  In  the  series  of  English  comic  poets, 
Wycherley,  Congreve,  Farquhar,  Vanbrugh,  Steele, 
Cibber,  etc.,  we  may  perceive  something  like  a 
gradation  from  the  most  unblushing  indecency  to 
a  tolerable  degree  of  modesty."  This,  however,  is 
only  partly  true ;  and  Schlegel  himself  remarks  in 
the  same  page,  ♦*  that  after  all  we  know  of  the  licen- 
tiousness of  manners  under  Charles  II.,  we  are  still 


PROFESSIONAL  AUTHORS  8 13 

lost   in  astonishment   at   the  audacious   ribaldry  of 
Wycherley  and  Congreve." 

Of  Vanbrugh's  ten  or  eleven  plays,  that  which  has 
longest  kept  the  stage  is  the  "  Relapse,"  still  acted, 
in  its  altered  form,  by  Sheridan,  as  the  "Trip  to 
Scarborough."  This  piece  was  produced  at  the 
Theatre  de  I'Odeon,  in  Paris,  in  the  spring  of  1862, 
as  a  posthumous  comedy  of  Voltaire's !  It  was 
called  the  "Comte  de  Boursoufle,"  and  had  a  "run." 
The  story  ran  with  it  that  Voltaire  had  composed  it 
in  his  younger  days  for  private  representation,  that  it 
had  been  more  than  once  played  in  the  houses  of  his 
noble  friends,  under  various  titles,  that  he  had  then 
locked  it  up,  and  that  the  manuscript  had  only  re- 
cently been  discovered  by  the  lucky  individual  who 
persuaded  the  manager  of  the  Odeon  to  produce  it 
on  his  stage !  The  bait  took.  All  the  French 
theatrical  world  in  the  capital  flocked  to  the  Fau- 
burg  St.  Germain  to  witness  a  new  play  by  Vol- 
taire. Critics  examined  the  plot,  philosophised  on  its 
humour,  applauded  its  absurdities,  enjoyed  its  wit, 
and  congratulated  themselves  on  the  circumstances 
that  the  Voltairean  wit  especially  was  as  enjoyable 
then  as  in  the  preceding  century !  Of  the  author- 
ship they  had  no  doubt  whatever;  for,  said  they,  if 
Voltaire  did  not  write  this  piece,  who  could  have 
written  it  ?  The  reply  was  given  at  once  from  this 
country  ;  but  when  the  mystification  was  exposed, 
the  French  critics  gave  no  sign  of  awarding  honour 
where  honour  was  due,  and  probably  this  translation 
of  the  **  Relapse "  may  figure  in  future  French  edi- 
tions  as  an  undoubted  work  by  Voltaire ! 

On  looking  back  upon  the  names  of  these  authors 


214  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

by  profession,  the  brightest  still  is  Otway's,  of  whom 
his  critical  biographers  have  said  that,  in  tragedy, 
few  English  poets  ever  equalled  him.  His  come- 
dies are  certainly  detestable ;  but  of  his  tragedies 
"  Venice  Preserved  "  alone  is  ever  now  played.  The 
"  Orphan  "  is  read  ;  **  Alcibiades,"  "  Don  Carlos," 
"  Titus  and  Berenice,"  are  all  forgotten.  Successful 
as  he  is  in  touching  the  passions,  and  eminently  so  in 
dealing  with  ardent  love,  Otway,  I  think,  is  inferior 
to  Lee,  occasionally,  in  the  latter  respect.  Of  Lee, 
Mrs.  Siddons  entertained  the  greatest  admiration, 
notwithstanding  his  bombast,  and  she  read  his  "  Theo- 
dosius,  or  the  Force  of  Love,"  with  such  feeling  as 
to  at  once  wring  sighs  from  the  heart  and  tears  from 
the  eyes.  She  saw  in  Lee's  poetry  a  very  rare 
quality,  or,  as  Campbell  remarks,  "  a  much  more 
frequent  capability  for  stage  effect  than  a  mere 
reader  would  be  apt  to  infer  from  the  superabun- 
dance of  the  poet's  extravagance."  Let  it  not  be 
forgotten  that  Addison  accuses  Lee  and  Shakespeare 
of  a  spurious  sublimity ;  and  he  adds,  that  "  in  these 
authors,  the  affectation  of  greatness  often  hurts  the 
perspicuity  of  style !  " 

The  professional  authors  were  not  equally  success- 
ful. Davenant  achieved  a  good  estate,  and  was 
buried  in  Westminster  Abbey,  like  a  gentleman. 
Dryden,  with  less  to  bequeath,  was  interred  in  the 
same  place,  without  organ  or  ceremony,  two  choris- 
ters walking  before  the  body,  candle  in  hand,  and 
singing  an  ode  of  Horace,  —  like  a  poet.  His  vic- 
tim, Tom  Shadwell,  acquired  wealth,  fairly  ;  he  lies 
in  Chelsea  Church,  but  his  son  raised  a  monument 
to  his  memory  in  the  abbey,  that  he  might  be  in  thus 


PROFESSIONAL  AUTHORS  215 

much  as  great  a  man  as  his  satirist.  Congreve,  too, 
is  there,  after  enjoying  a  greater  fortune  than  the 
others  together  had  ever  built  up,  and  leaving 
;6' 1 0,000  of  it  to  Henrietta,  Duchess  of  Marlborough, 
who  so  valued  the  "  honour  and  pleasure  of  his  com- 
pany," when  living,  that,  as  the  next  best  thing,  she 
sat  of  an  evening  with  his  "  wax  figure  "  after  he 
was  dead.  Among  the  dead  there,  also,  rest  Cibber, 
Vanbrugh,  and  Rowe,  of  whom  the  first,  too  care- 
less of  his  money  affairs,  died  the  poorest  man. 

Better  men  than  either  of  the  last,  sleep  in  hum- 
bler graves.  Poor  Nat.  Lee,  tottering  homeward 
from  the  Bull  and  Harrow  on  a  winter's  night,  and 
with  more  punch  under  his  belt  than  his  brain  could 
bear,  falls  down  in  the  snow,  near  Duke  Street,  Lin- 
coln's Inn  Fields,  and  is  dead  when  he  is  picked  up. 
He  is  shuffled  away  to  St.  Clement's  Danes.  If  Lee 
died  tipsy,  outside  a  public  house,  Otway  died  half- 
starved,  within  one,  at  the  Bull,  on  Tower  Hill.  The 
merits  of  Lee  and  Otway  might  have  carried  them 
to  Westminster,  but  their  misfortunes  barred  the 
way  thither.  Almost  as  unfortunate.  Settle  died, 
after  hissing  in  a  dragon  at  Bartholomew  Fair,  a 
recipient  of  the  charity  of  the  Charterhouse.  Crowne 
died  in  distress,  just  as  he  hoped  his  "  Sir  Courtley 
Nice  "  would  have  placed  him  at  his  ease.  Wycher- 
ley,  with  less  excuse,  died  more  embarrassed  than 
Crowne,  or  would  have  done  so  had  he  not  robbed 
his  young  wife  of  her  portion,  made  it  over  to  his 
creditors,  and  left  her  little  wherewith  to  bury  him 
in  the  churchyard  in  Co  vent  Garden.  Two  other 
poets,  who  passed  away  unencumbered  by  a  single 
splendid  shilling,  rest  in  St.  James's,  Westminster,  — 


?l6  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

Tom  Durfey  and  Bankes.  Careless,  easy,  free,  and  fud- 
dling Tate  died  in  the  sanctuary  of  the  Mint,  and  St. 
George's,  South wark,  gave  him  a  few  feet  of  earth ; 
while  Brady  pushed  his  way  at  court  to  preferment, 
and  died  a  comfortable  pluralist  and  chaplain  to 
Caroline,  Princess  of  Wales.  Farquhar,  with  all  his 
wit,  died  a  broken-hearted  beggar,  at  the  age  of 
thirty-seven  ;  and  Dennis,  who  struggled  forty  years 
longer  with  fortune,  came  to  the  same  end,  utterly 
destitute  of  all  but  the  contemptuous  pity  of  his  foes, 
and  the  insulting  charity  of  Pope. 

I  think  that  of  the  whole  brotherhood,  Southeme, 
after  he  left  the  army,  and  had  sown  his  wild  oats, 
was  the  most  prudent  and  not  the  least  successful. 
He  was  a  perfect  gentleman ;  he  did  not  lounge 
away  his  days  or  nights  in  coffee-houses  or  taverns, 
but,  after  labour,  cultivated  friendship  in  home 
circles,  where  virtue  and  moderate  mirth  sat  at  the 
hearth.  In  his  bag-wig,  his  black  velvet  dress,  his 
sword,  powder,  brilliant  buckles,  and  self-possession, 
Southerne  charmed  his  company,  wherever  he  visited, 
even  at  fourscore.  He  kept  the  even  tenor  of  his 
way,  owing  no  man  anything ;  never  allowing  his 
nights  to  be  the  marrer  of  his  mornings  ;  and  at  six 
and  eighty  carrying  a  bright  eye,  a  steady  hand,  a 
clear  head,  and  a  warm  heart  —  wherewith  to  calmly 
meet  and  make  surrender  of  all  to  the  Inevitable 
Angel. 

As  Southerne  originally  wrote  "Oronooko,"  that 
tragedy  could  not  now  be  represented.  The  mixture 
of  comic  scenes  with  tragic  is  not  its  worst  fault. 
His  comedies  are  of  no  worth  whatever,  except  as 
they  illustrate  the  manners  and  habits  of  his  times. 


PROFESSIONAL  AUTHORS  217 

They  more  closely  resemble  those  of  Ravenscroft 
than  of  Congreve  or  Wycherley.  His  "  Sir  Anthony 
Love  "  was  successful ;  it  is  impossible  to  conjecture 
wherefore.  It  has  not  a  wise  sentiment  or  a  happy 
saying  in  it ;  and  all  to  be  learned  from  it  is,  that 
Englishmen,  when  abroad,  in  those  days,  used  to 
herd  together  in  self-defence,  against  being  cheated ; 
that  they  were  too  wise  to  learn  anything  by  travel ; 
and  were  fond  of  passing  themselves  off  as  having 
made  a  campaign.  As  Cowley  anticipated  Moore, 
in  the  "  Cutter,"  so,  in  "  Sir  Anthony,"  has  Southeme 
anticipated  Burns.  "  Of  the  king's  creation,"  says 
the  supposed  Sir  Anthony  to  Count  Verola,  "you 
may  be ;  but  he  who  makes  a  count,  never  made  a 
man."  There  is  the  same  sentiment  improved  in  the 
well-known  hnes : 

«*  A  king  may  mak'  a  belted  knight, 
A  marquis,  duke,  and  a'  that; 
But  an  honest  man's  aboon  his  might, 
Gude  faith  he  canna  fa'  that." 

Southerne  was  not  more  famous  for  the  nicety  of 
his  costume  than  "  little  starched  Johnny  Crowne " 
was  for  his  stiff,  long  cravat ;  or  Dryden  for  his  Nor- 
wich drugget  suit,  or  his  gayer  dress  in  later  days, 
when,  with  sword  and  Chadrieux  wig,  he  paraded  the 
Mulberry  garden  with  his  Mistress  Reeve  —  one  of 
that  marvellous  company  of  1672,  which  writers  with 
long  memories  used  to  subsequently  say  could  never 
be  got  together  again.  Ot way's  thoughtful  eye  re- 
deemed his  slovenly  dress  and  his  fatness,  and  seemed 
to  warrant  the  story  of  his  repenting  after  his  carous- 
ing.    Lee  dressed  as  ill  as  Otway,  but  lacked  his 


2i8  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

contemplative  eye,  yet  excelled  him  in  fair  looks,  and 
in  a  peculiar  luxuriance  of  hair. 

Shaftesbury,  in  his  "  Characteristics,"  shows  us 
how  the  playhouse  authors  throned  it  in  coffee- 
houses, and  were  worshipped  by  small  wits.  There 
were,  however,  dramatic  authors  who  never  went 
thither ;  and  of  these,  the  ladies,  I  have  now  to  speak. 


CHAPTER   XI. 

THE    DRAMATIC    AUTHORESSES 

During  this  half  century,  there  were  seven  ladies 
who  were  more  or  less  distinguished  as  writers  for 
the  stage.  These  were  the  virtuous  Mrs.  Philips, 
the  audacious  Ephra  Behn,  the  not  less  notorious 
Mrs,  Manley,  the  gentle  and  learned  Mrs.  Cockburn, 
the  rather  aristocratic  Mrs.  Boothby  (of  whom  noth- 
ing is  known  but  that  she  wrote  one  play,  called 
"Marcatia,"  in  1669),  fat  Mrs.  Pix,  and  that  thorough 
Whig,  Mrs.  Centlivre.  The  last  four  belong  also  to 
the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century ;  and  three 
at  least  apologised  that  they,  women  as  they  were, 
should  have  ventured  to  become  dramatists. 

The  "virtuous  Mrs.  Philips,"  of  Evelyn,  the 
"matchless  Orinda,"  of  Cowley  and  other  poets, 
translated  the  "  Pompey  "  and  "  Horace  "  of  Cor- 
neille.  In  those  grave  pieces,  represented  at  court 
in  the  early  years  of  the  Restoration,  the  poetess 
endeavoured  to  direct  the  popular  taste,  and  to  cor- 
rect it  also.  Had  she  not  died  (of  smallpox,  and  in 
the  thirty-third  year  of  her  age),  she  might  have  set 
such  example  to  the  playwrights  as  the  Bettertons 
did  to  the  actors ;  but  her  good  intentions  were 
frustrated,  and  her  place  was  unhappily  occupied  by 

219 


220  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

the  most  shameless  woman  who  ever  took  pen  in 
hand,  designedly  to  corrupt  the  public. 

Aphra  Behn  was  a  Kentish  woman,  whose  early 
years  were  passed  at  Surinam,  where  her  father, 
Johnson,  had  resided,  as  lieutenant-generaL  After 
a  wild  training  in  that  fervid  school,  she  repaired  to 
London,  married  a  Dutchman  named  Behn,  who 
seems  to  have  straightway  disappeared,  —  penetrated, 
by  means  of  her  beauty,  to  the  court  of  Charles  II., 
—  and  obtained,  by  means  of  her  wit,  an  irregular 
employment  at  Antwerp,  —  that  of  a  spy.  The 
letters  of  her  Dutch  lovers  belong  to  romance ;  but 
there  is  warrant  for  the  easy  freedom  of  this  woman's 
life.  In  other  respects  she  was  unfortunate.  On 
her  return  to  England,  her  political  reports  and 
prophecies  were  no  more  credited  than  the  moni- 
tions of  old,  by  Cassandra ;  so  she  abandoned  Eng- 
land to  its  fate,  and  herself  "to  pleasure  and  the 
muses." 

Her  opportunities  for  good  were  great,  but  she 
abused  them  all.  She  might  have  been  an  honour 
to  womanhood ;  she  was  its  disgrace.  She  might 
have  gained  glory  by  her  labours ;  but  she  chose  to 
reap  infamy.  Her  pleasures  were  not  those  which 
became  an  honest  woman ;  and,  as  for  her  "  Muses," 
she  sat  not  with  them  on  the  slopes  of  Helicon,  but 
dragged  them  down  to  her  level,  where  the  Nine  and 
their  unclean  votary  wallowed  together  in  the  mire. 

There  is  no  one  that  equals  this  woman  in  down- 
right nastmess,  save  Ravenscroft  and  Wycherley; 
but  the  latter  of  these  had  more  originality  of  inven- 
tion and  grace  of  expression.  To  these  writers,  and 
to  those  of  their  detestable  school,  she  set  a  revolting 


THE  DRAMATIC  AUTHORESSES  221^ 

example,  Dryden  preceded  her,  by  a  little,  on  the 
stage ;  but  Mrs.  Behn's  trolloping  muse  appeared 
there  before  the  other  two  writers  I  have  mentioned, 
and  was  still  making  unseemly  exhibition  there  after 
the  coming  of  Congreve.  With  Dryden  she  vied  in 
indecency,  and  was  not  overcome.  To  all  other  male 
writers  of  her  day  she  served  as  a  provocation  and 
an  apology.  Intellectually,  she  was  qualified  to  have 
led  them  through  pure  and  bright  ways ;  but  she  was 
a  mere  harlot,  who  danced  through  uncleanness,  and 
dared  or  lured  them  to  follow.     Remonstrance  w; 


useless  with_lhis  wanton  hussy,  ^s  for  her  private 
lifeTit  has  found  a  champion  in  a  female  friend,  whose 
precious  balsam  breaks  the  head  it  would  anoint. 
According  to  this  friend,  Mrs.  Behn  had  numerous 
good  qualities  ;  but  "  she  was  a  woman  of  sense,  and 
consequently  loved  pleasure ; "  and  she  was  "  more 
gay  and  free  than  the  modesty  of  the  precise  will 
allow." 

Of  Aphra  Behn's  eighteen  plays,  produced  between 
1 67 1  and  1 696,  —  before  which  last  year,  however, 
she  had  died,  —  but  few  are  original.  They  are 
adaptations  from  Marlowe,  from  Wilkins,  from  Killi- 
grew,  from  Brome,  from  Tatham,  from  Shirley,  from 
the  Italian  comedy,  from  Moli^re,  and  more  legiti- 
mately from  the  old  romances.  She  adapted  skil- 
fully; and  she  was  never  dull.  But  then,  all  her 
vivacity  is  wasted  on  filth.  When  the  public  sent 
forth  a  cry  of  horror  at  some  of  the  scenes  in  her 
play  of  **  The  Lucky  Chance,"  she  vindicated  herself 
by  asking,  «*  Was  she  not  loyal } "  —  "  Tory  to  the 
back  bone  ; "  —  had  she  not  made  the  king's  enemies 
ridiculous,  in  her  five-act  farces ;   and  had  she   not 


tid     I 


ssa  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

done  homage  to  the  king  by  dedicating  her  "  Feigned 
Courtesans"  to  Nell  Gwyn,  and  styling  that  worthy 
sister  of  her's  in  vice  and  good  nature,  —  so  perfect 
a  creature  as  to  be  something  akin  to  divinity  ? 

For  Mrs.  Manley  there  was  more  excuse.  That 
poor  daughter  of  an  old  royalist  had  some  reason  to 
depict  human  nature  as  bad,  in  man  and  in  woman. 
The  young  orphan  trusted  herself  to  the  guardianship 
of  a  seductive  kinsman,  who  married  her  when  he  had 
a  wife  still  living.  This  first  wrong  destroyed  her, 
but  not  her  villainous  cousin  ;  and,  unfortunately,  the 
woman  upon  whom  the  world  looked  cool  incurred 
the  capricious  compassion  of  the  Duchess  of  Cleve- 
land. When  the  caprice  was  over,  and  Mrs.  Manley 
had  only  her  own  resources  to  rely  upon,  she  scorned 
the  aid  offered  her  by  General  Tidcombe,  and  made 
her  first  venture  for  the  stage  in  the  tragedy  of 
"  Royal  Mischief,"  produced  at  the  Lincoln's  Inn 
Fields  Theatre,  in  1696.  It  is  all  desperate  love,  of 
a  very  bad  quality,  and  indiscriminate  murder,  relieved 
by  variety  in  the  mode  of  killing ;  one  unfortunate 
gentleman,  named  Osman,  being  thrust  into  a  cannon 
and  fired  from  it,  after  which  his  wife,  Selima,  is  said 
to  be  — 

«♦  Gathering  the  smoking  relics  of  her  lord ! " 

The  authoress,  in  her  next  venture,  in  the  same 
year,  a  comedy,  written  in  a  week,  and  which  per- 
ished in  a  night,  "  The  Lost  Lover,"  introduced  what 
the  public  had  been  taught  to  appreciate,  —  a  virtuous 
wife.  Her  other  pieces,  written  at  intervals  of  ten 
years,  were  "  Almyna,"  founded  on  the  story  of  the 
Caliph  who  was  addicted  to  marrying  one  day,  and 


THE  DRAMATIC  AUTHORESSES  223 

beheading  his  wife  the  next ;  and  "  Lucius,"  a  semi- 
sacred  play,  on  the  supposed  first  Christian  king  of 
Britain  —  both  unsuccessful. 

Mrs.  Manley  survived  till  1724.  When  not  under 
the  "protection"  of  a  friend,  or  in  decent  mourning 
for  the  lovers  who  died  mad  for  her,  she  was  engaged 
in  composing  the  "  Memoirs  of  the  New  Atalantis," 
—  a  satire  against  the  Whig  ministry,  the  authorship 
of  which  she  courageously  avowed,  rather  than  that 
the  printer  and  publisher  should  suffer  for  her.  The 
Tory  ministry  which  succeeded,  employed  her  pen ; 
and  with  Smith's  Alderman  Barber,  —  he  being  Tory 
printer,  she  resided  till  her  death,  mistress  of  the 
house,  and  of  the  alderman. 

Contemporary  with  Mrs.  Manley  was  Miss  Trotter, 
the  daughter  of  a  Scottish  officer,  but  better  known 
as  Mrs.  Cockburn,  wife  and  widow  of  an  English 
clergyman.  She  was  at  first  a  very  learned  young 
lady,  whose  speculations  took  her  to  the  Church  of 
Rome,  from  which  in  later  years  she  seceded.  She 
was  but  seventeen,  when,  in  1696,  her  sentimental 
tragedy,  "Agnes  de  Castro,"  was  played  at  Drury 
Lane.  Her  career,  as  writer  for  the  stage,  lasted 
ten  years,  during  which  she  produced  five  pieces,  all 
of  a  sentimental  but  refined  class,  —  illustrating  love, 
friendship,  repentance,  and  conjugal  faith.  There  is 
some  amount  of  word-spinning  in  these  plays ;  and 
this  is  well  marked  by  Genest's  comment  on  Mrs. 
Cockburn's  "  Revolution  of  Sweden,"  namely,  that  if 
Constantin,  in  the  third  act,  had  been  influenced  by 
common  sense,  she  would  have  spoiled  the  remainder 
of  the  play. 

Nevertheless,  Mrs.  Cockburn  was  a.  clever  woman, 


224  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

and  kept  no  dull  household,  though  she  there  wrote  a 
defence  of  Locke,  while  her  reverend  husband  was 
pursuing  an  account  of  the  Mosaic  deluge.  As  a 
metaphysical  and  controversial  writer,  she  gathered 
laurels  and  abuse  in  her  day,  for  the  latter  of  which 
she  found  compensation  in  the  friendship  and  admira- 
tion of  Warburton.  She  was  a  valiant  woman,  too ; 
one  whom  asthma  and  the  ills  of  life  could  not  deter 
from  labour.  But  death  relieved  her  from  all  these, 
in  1749;  and  she  is  remembered  in  the  history  of 
literature  as  a  good  and  well-accomplished  woman  ; 
the  very  opposite  of  Mrs.  Behn  and  all  her  heroines. 

Fat  Mrs.  Fix  enjoyed  a  certain  sort  of  vogue  from 
1696  to  1709.  She  came  from  Oxfordshire,  was  the 
daughter  of  a  clergyman,  was  married  to  a  Mr.  Fix, 
and  was  a  woman  of  genius,  and  much  flesh.  She 
wrote  eleven  plays,  but  not  one  of  them  has  survived 
to  our  time.  Her  comedies  are,  however,  full  of  life ; 
her  tragedies  more  than  brimful  of  loyalty ;  later 
dramatists  have  not  disdained  to  pick  up  some  of 
Mrs.  Fix's  forgotten  incidents ;  and,  indeed,  contem- 
porary playwrights  stole  her  playful  lightning,  if  not 
her  thunder;  her  plots  were  not  ill-conceived,  but 
they  were  carried  out  by  inexpressive  language, 
some  of  her  tragedies  being  in  level  prose,  and  some, 
mixtures  of  rhyme  and  blank  verse.  She  herself  oc- 
casionally remodelled  an  old  play,  but  did  not  improve 
it ;  while,  when  she  trusted  to  herself,  at  least  in  a 
farcical  sort  of  comedy,  she  was  bustling  and  humour- 
ous. Mrs,  Manley,  Mrs,  Cockbum,  and  Mrs.  Fix 
were  ridiculed  in  a  farce  called  "  The  Female  Wits," 
their  best  endowments  satirised,  and  their  peculiarities 
mimicked.     The  first  and  last  of  those  ladies  repre- 


THE  DRAMATIC  AUTHORESSES  225 

sented  some  of  their  dramas  as  written  by  men,  a 
subterfuge  to  which  a  greater  than  either  of  them 
was  also  obliged  to  resort,  namely,  Susanna  Cent- 
livre. 

Susanna  Freeman  was  her  maiden  name.  She  was 
the  orphan  daughter  of  a  stout  but  hardly  dealt  with 
parliamentarian,  and  of  a  mother  who  died  too  early  for 
the  daughter's  remembrance.  Anthony  Hammond  is 
said  to  have  been  in  love  with  her,  a  nephew  of  Sir 
Stephen  Fox  to  have  married  her,  and  a  Captain 
Carrol  to  have  left  her  a  widow  —  all  before  she  was 
well  out  of  her  teens.  Thus  she  had  passed  through 
a  school  of  experience,  and  to  turn  it  to  account, 
Susanna  Carrol  began  writing  for  the  stage.  Writ- 
ing for  —  and  acting  on  it,  for  we  find  her  in  1706 
playing  "Alexander  the  Great"  at  Windsor,  where 
she  also  married  Mr.  Centlivre,  Queen  Anne's  chief 
cook. 

Of  Mrs.  Centlivre's  nineteen  plays,  three  at  least 
are  still  well  known,  the  "Busy  Body,"  the  "Won- 
der," and  "A  Bold  Stroke  for  a  Wife."  When  she 
offered  the  first  to  the  players  —  it  was  her  ninth 
play  —  the  actors  unanimously  denounced  it.  Wilks, 
—  who  had  hitherto  been  unaccustomed  to  the  want 
of  straining  after  wit,  the  common  sense,  the  unforced 
sprightliness,  the  homely  nature,  for  which  this  piece 
is  distinguished  —  declared  that  not  only  would  it  be 
"  damned,"  but  that  the  author  of  it  could  hardly  ex- 
pect to  avoid  a  similar  destiny ;  and  yet  its  triumph 
was  undoubted,  though  cumulative. 

Hitherto  the  authoress  had  written  a  tragi-comedy 
or  two,  the  comic  scenes  in  which  alone  gave  evidence 
of  strength,  but  not  always  of  delicacy.     She  had,  in 


2  26  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

others,  ftolen  wholesale  from  Moli^re  and  the  old 
English  dramatists.  She  produced  a  continuation  to 
the  "Busy  Body,"  in  "Marplot,"  but  we  do  not  care 
for  it ;  and  it  is  not  till  her  fourteenth  piece,  the 
"Wonder,"  appeared  in  1714,  that  she  again  chal- 
lenges admiration.  This,  too,  is  an  adaptation ;  but  it 
is  superior  to  the  "Wrangling  Lovers,"  from  which 
it  is  partly  taken,  and  which  had  no  such  hero  as  the 
Don  Felix  of  Wilks.  The  "  Bold  Stroke  for  a  Wife  " 
was  first  played  in  171 8,  when  the  Tory  public  had 
forgiven  the  author  for  her  satires  against  them,  and 
the  theatrical  public  her  fresh  adaptations  of  old 
scenes  and  stories.  The  "  Bold  Stroke  for  a  Wife  " 
is  entirely  her  own,  and  has  had  a  wonderful  succes- 
sion of  Colonel  Feignwells,  from  C.  Bullock  down  to 
Mr.  Graham  !  This  piece,  however,  was  but  moder- 
ately successful ;  but  it  has  such  vivacity,  fun,  and 
quiet  humour  in  it,  that  it  has  outlived  many  a  one 
that  began  with  greater  triumph,  and  in  "the  real 
Simon  Pure,"  first  acted  by  Griffin,  it  has  given  a 
proverb  to  the  English  language.  One  other  piece, 
the  "Artifice,"  a  five-act  farce,  played  in  1722,  con- 
cludes the  list  of  plays  from  the  pen  of  this  industri- 
ous and  gifted  woman. 

Mrs.  Centlivre  had  unobtrusive  humour,  sayings 
full  of  significance  rather  than  wit,  wholesome  fun  in 
her  comic,  and  earnestness  in  her  serious,  characters. 
Mrs.  Centlivre,  in  her  pictures  of  life,  attracts  the 
spectator.  There  may  be,  now  and  then,  something, 
as  in  Dutch  pictures,  which  had  been  as  well  away ; 
but  this  apart,  all  the  rest  is  true,  and  pleasant,  and 
hearty ;  the  grouping  perfect,  the  colour  faithful,  and 
enduring  too  —  despite  the  cruel  sneer  of  Pope,  who, 


THE  DRAMATIC  AUTHORESSES  227 

in  the  "  Life  of  Curll,"  sarcastically  alludes  to  her  as 
"the  cook's  wife  in  Buckingham  Court,"  in  which 
vicinity  to  Spring  Gardens,  Mrs.  Centlivre  died  in 
1723. 

Such  were  the  characteristics  of  the  principal 
authors  who  led,  followed,  trained,  or  flattered  the 
public  taste  of  the  last  half  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, and  a  few  of  them  of  the  first  part  of  the  century 
which  succeeded.  Before  we  pass  onward  to  the  stage 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  let  us  cast  a  glance  back, 
and  look  at  the  quality  of  the  audiences  for  whom 
these  poets  catered. 


CHAPTER   XII. 

THE   AUDIENCES   OF   THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

Speedily  after  the  Restoration,  there  was  no 
more  constant  visitor  at  the  theatre  than  Charles  II., 
with  a  gay  and  what  is  called  a  gallant  gathering. 
Thus  we  are  arrested  by  a  crowd  at  the  Temple 
Gate.  On  the  15  th  of  August,  1661,  Charles  and 
the  Duke  and  Duchess  of  York  are  leaving  the  apart- 
ments of  the  reader,  Sir  Henry  Finch,  with  whom 
they  have  been  dining,  and  an  eager  audience  is 
awaiting  them  in  the  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields  Theatre, 
where  "  The  Wits  "  is  to  be  represented  —  a  piece 
"never  yet  acted,"  says  Pepys,  "with  scenes."  Two 
nights  later  the  same  piece  is  playing,  and  the 
Queen  of  Bohemia  is  there,  "brought  by  my  Lord 
Craven,"  whom  some  do  not  scruple  to  speak  of  as 
the  ex-queen's  husband.  A  week  later,  Charles  and 
"  Madame  Palmer "  were  at  the  theatre  in  Drury 
Lane,  with  the  Duke  of  York  and  his  wife.  "My 
wife,"  says  Pepys,  "to  her  great  content,  had  a  full 
sight  of  them  all  the  while."  The  king's  Madame 
Palmer  became,  in  fact,  an  attraction ;  seated  be- 
tween Charles  and  his  brother,  Pepys  beheld  her  a 
few  weeks  later,  when  he  and  his  wife  escorted  Lord 
Sandwich's  young  daughters  to  the  theatre,  and  ob- 

228 


AUDIENCES  OF  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY     229 

tained  places  close  to  madame  and  her  double  escort. 
The  play  was  Jonson's  "  Bartholomew  Fair,"  with 
the  puppets,  and  all  its  virulent  satire  against  the 
Puritans.  As  Pepys  listened  and  remembered  that 
no  one  had  dared  to  bring  forward  this  slashing  play 
for  the  last  forty  years,  he  wondered  at  the  audacity 
of  managers  now,  and  grieved  that  the  king  should 
countenance  it.  But  what  recked  the  laughing  king, 
when  Puritanism  was  in  the  dust,  and  troops  of  cava- 
liers were  singing  "  Up  we  go  ? " 

Occasionally,  if  Pepys  witnesses  a  play  ill-acted,  he 
finds  compensation  in  sitting  near  some  "pretty  and 
ingenious  lady."  At  that  time  oranges  were  more 
costly  than  pines  are  now,  and  to  offer  one  of  the 
former,  even  to  an  unknown  fair  neighbour,  was  an 
intimation  of  a  readiness  on  the  part  of  the  presenter 
to  open  a  conversation.  To  behold  his  most  sacred 
Majesty  seated  in  his  box  was  for  ever,  with  Pepys, 
even  a  stronger  attraction  than  the  eyes  or  the  wit 
of  the  fairest  and  sprightliest  of  ladies.  Again  and 
again  he  registers  a  vow  to  refrain  from  resorting  to 
the  theatre  during  a  certain  period,  but  he  no  sooner 
hears  of  the  presence  there  of  his  religious  and  gra- 
cious king,  than  he  breaks  his  vow,  rushes  to  the 
play,  perjures  himself  out  of  royal  courtesy,  and  next 
morning  writes  himself  down  an  ass. 

At  the  Cockpit  in  Drury  Lane,  Charles's  consort, 
Catherine,  was  exhibited  to  the  English  people  for 
the  first  time,  on  an  autumn  afternoon  of  1662,  when 
Shirley's  "  Cardinal "  was  represented.  Pepys,  of 
course,  was  there  too ;  and  reproduces  the  scene : 
"By  very  good  fortune,  I  did  follow  four  or  five 
gentlemen  who  were  carried  to  a  little  private  door 


23®  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

in  a  wall,  and  so  crept  through  a  narrow  place,  and 
came  into  one  of  the  boxes  next  the  king's,  but 
so  as  I  could  not  see  the  king  or  queen,  but  many 
of  the  fine  ladies,  who  are  not  really  so  hand- 
some generally,  as  I  used  to  take  them  to  be,  but 
that  they  are  finely  dressed.  The  company  that 
came  in  with  me  into  the  box  were  all  Frenchmen 
that  could  speak  no  English  ;  but.  Lord,  what  sport 
they  made  to  ask  a  pretty  lady  that  they  got  among 
them,  that  understood  both  French  and  English,  to 
make  her  tell  them  what  the  actors  said ! " 

Soon  after  this,  in  dreary  November,  there  is 
a  crowded  audience  to  greet  the  king  and  queen, 
with  whom  now  appears  the  Castlemaine,  once  more, 
and  near  her  Lucy's  Walter's  boy,  the  Duke  of  Mon- 
mouth, all  beauty  and  pretty  assurance ;  and  Pepys 
sees  no  harm  in  a  company  who  have  come  together 
to  witness  a  comedy  whose  name  might  well  describe 
the  look  and  bearing  of  the  outraged  queen,  namely, 
the  "  Scornful  Lady."  No  wonder  that,  in  Decem- 
ber, at  the  tragedy  of  the  "  Valiant  Cid,"  she  did  not 
smile  once  during  the  whole  play.  But  nobody  pres- 
ent on  that  occasion  seemed  to  take  any  pleasure 
but  what  was  in  the  greatness  and  gallantry  of  the 
company. 

That  greatness  and  that  gallantry  were  the  idols 
of  the  diarist.  With  what  scorn  he  talks  of  the 
audience  at  the  Duke's  Theatre  a  few  days  later, 
when  the  "  Siege  of  Rhodes  "  was  represented.  He 
was  ill-pleased.  The  house  was  "  full  of  citizens !  " 
"There  was  hardly,"  says  the  fastidious  son  of  an 
honest  tailor,  "a  gallant  man  or  woman  in  the 
house!"     So,  in  January,  1663,  at  the  same  theatre, 


AUDIENCES  OF  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY     231 

he  records  that  "it  was  full  of  citizens,  and  so  the 
less  pleasant."  The  Duke's  House  was  less  "gen- 
teel "  than  the  Cockpit ;  but  the  royal  visitors  at  the 
latter  were  not  much  more  refined  in  their  manners 
than  the  audience  in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  or  Salis- 
bury Court.  Early  in  January,  1663,  the  Duke  of 
York  and  his  wife  honoured  a  play  of  Killigrew's  by 
their  presence,  and  did  not  much  edify  the  specta- 
tors by  their  conduct.  "They  did  show,"  writes 
the  immortal  journalist,  "some  impertinent  and  me- 
thought  unnatural  dalliances  there,  before  the  whole 
world,  such  as  kissing  of  hands,  and  leaning  one  upon 
another." 

But  there  were  worse  scenes  than  these  conjugal 
displays  at  the  King's  House.  When  Pepys  was 
dying  to  obtain  the  only  prize  in  all  the  world  he 
desired.  Lady  Castlemaine's  picture,  that  bold  person 
was  beginning  to  lose,  at  once,  both  her  beauty  and 
her  place  of  favour  with  the  king.  Pepys  was  im- 
mensely grieved,  for  she  was  always  more  to  him 
than  the  play  and  players  to  boot.  He  had  reason, 
however,  to  be  satisfied  that  she  had  not  lost  her 
boldness.  In  January,  1664,  the  "Indian  Queen" 
was  played  at  the  King's  House,  in  Drury  Lane. 
Lady  Castlemaine  was  present  before  the  king  arrived. 
When  he  entered  his  box,  the  countess  leaned  over 
some  ladies  who  sat  between  her  and  the  royal  box, 
and  whispered  to  Charles.  Having  been  thus  bold 
in  face  of  the  audience,  she  arose,  left  her  own  box 
and  appeared  in  the  king's,  where  she  deliberately 
took  a  place  between  Charles  and  his  brother.  It 
was  not  the  king  alone,  but  the  whole  audience  with 
him  who  were  put  out  of  countenance  by  this  cool 


232  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

audacity,  exhibited  to  prove  that  she  was  not  so 
much  out  of  favour  as  the  world  believed. 

What  a  contrast  is  presented  by  the  appearance 
of  Cromwell's  daughter,  Lady  Mary,  in  her  box  at 
this  same  theatre,  with  her  husband,  Viscount  Falcon- 
bridge !  Pepys  praises  her  looks  and  her  dress,  and 
suggests  a  modest  embarrassment  on  her  part  as  the 
house  began  to  fill,  and  the  admiring  spectators  began 
to  gaze  too  curiously  on  Oliver's  loved  child ;  "  she 
put  on  her  vizard,  and  so>  kept  it  on  all  the  play, 
which  of  late  has  become  a  great  fashion  among  the 
ladies,  which   hides  their  whole  face." 

Mary  Cromwell,  modestly  masked,  was  a  prettier 
sight  than  what  Pepys  on  other  occasions  describes 
as  •*  all  the  pleasure  of  the  play ; "  meaning,  thereby, 
the  presence  of  Lady  Castlemaine,  or  of  Miss  Stew- 
art, her  rival  in  royal  favour,  but  not  her  equal  in 
peerless  beauty.  With  these,  but  in  less  exalted 
company  than  they,  we  now  meet  with  Nell  Gwyn, 
in  front  of  the  house.  She  is  seen  gossiping  with 
Pepys,  who  is  ecstatic  at  the  condescension ;  or  she 
is  blazing  in  the  boxes,  prattling  with  the  young  and 
scented  fops,  and  impudently  lying  across  any  three 
of  them,  that  she  may  converse  as  she  pleases  with 
a  fourth.  And  there  is  Sir  Charles  Sedley  looking 
on,  smiling  with  or  at  the  actors  of  these  scenes, 
among  the  audience,  or  sharply  and  wittily  criticising 
the  players  on  the  stage,  and  the  words  put  into 
their  mouths  by  the  author,  or  flirting  with  vizard 
masks  in  the  pit.  Altogether,  there  is  much  confu- 
sion and  interruption ;  but  there  is  also,  occasionally, 
disturbance  of  another  sort,  as  when,  in  June,  1664, 
a  storm  of  hail  and  rain  broke  through  the  roof  of  the 


AUDIENCES  OF  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY     233 

King's  House,  and  drove  the  half-drowned  people 
from  the  pit  in  a  disorder  not  at  all  admired. 

Like  Evelyn,  Pepys  was  often  at  the  court  plays, 
but,  except  with  the  spectacle  of  the  queen's  ladies, 
and  the  king's  too,  for  that  matter,  he  found  small 
delight  there,  —  the  house,  although  fine,  being  bad 
for  hearing.  This  court  patronage,  public  and  pri- 
vate, increased  the  popularity  of  the  drama,  as  the 
vices  of  the  king  increased  the  fashion  of  being  dis- 
solute ;  and  when  Charles  was  sadly  in  need  of  a 
collecting  of  members  of  Parliament  to  throw  out 
a  bill  which  very  much  annoyed  him,  and  was  carried 
against  him,  he  bade  the  lord  chamberlain  to  scour 
the  play  and  other  houses,  where  he  knew  his 
parliamentary  friends  were  to  be  found,  and  to 
send  them  down  to  vote  in  favour  of  their  graceless 
master. 

Ladies  of  quality,  and  of  good  character,  too,  c6uld 
in  those  days  appear  in  masks  in  the  boxes,  and  unat- 
tended. The  vizard  had  not  yet  fallen  to  the  disrep- 
utable. Such  ladies  as  are  above  designated  entered 
into  struggles  of  wit  with  the  fine  gentlemen,  banter- 
ing them  unmercifully,  calling  them  by  their  names, 
and  refusing  to  tell  their  own.  All  this  was  to  the 
disturbance  of  the  stage,  but  this  battle  of  the  wits 
was  so  frequently  more  amusing  than  what  might 
be  passing  for  the  moment  on  the  stage,  that  the 
audience  near  listened  to  the  disputants  rather  than 
to  the  actors.  Sir  Charles  Sedley  was  remarkable  as 
a  disputant  with  the  ladies,  and  as  a  critic  of  the 
players.  That  the  overhearing  of  what  was  said 
by  the  most  famous  of  the  box  visitors  was  a  pleas- 
ant pastime  of  many  hearers,  is  made  manifest  by 


234  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

Pepys,  who  once  took  his  place  on  "the  upper  bench 
next  the  boxes,"  and  describes  it  as  having  "the 
advantage  of  seeing  and  hearing  the  great  people, 
which  may  be  pleasant  when  there  is  good  store." 

To  no  man  then  living  in  England  did  fellowship 
with  people  of  quality  convey  such  intense  delight 
as  to  Pepys.  "Lord!"  he  exclaims,  in  May,  1667, 
"  how  it  went  against  my  heart  to  go  away  from  the 
very  door  of  the  Duke's  Playhouse,  and  my  Lady 
Castlemaine's  coach,  and  many  great  coaches  there, 
to  see  '  The  Siege  of  Rhodes.'  I  was  very  near 
making  a  forfeit,"  he  adds,  "but  I  did  command 
myself." 

He  was  happiest  with  a  baronet  like  Sir  Philip 
Frowd  at  his  side,  and  behind  him  a  couple  of 
impertinently  pretty  actresses,  like  Pierce  and  Knipp, 
pulling  his  hair,  drawing  him  into  gossiping  flirta- 
tions, and  inducing  him  to  treat  them  with  fruit. 
The  constant  presence  of  lively  actresses  in  the  front 
of  the  house  was  one  of  the  features  of  the  times, 
and  a  dear  delight  to  Pepys,  who  was  never  weary  of 
admiring  their  respective  beauties. 

Proud  as  he  was  of  sitting,  for  the  first  time  in  his 
life,  in  a  box,  at  four  shillings,  he  still  saw  the  pit 
occupied  by  greater  men  than  any  around  him,  par- 
ticularly on  the  first  night  of  a  new  piece.  When 
Etherege's  comedy,  "  She  Would  if  She  Could,"  was 
first  played,  in  February,  1668,  to  one  of  the  most 
crowded,  critical,  and  discontented  audiences  that  had 
ever  assembled  in  the  Duke's  House,  the  pit  was 
brilliant  with  peers,  gallants,  and  wits.  There  openly 
sat  Buckingham,  and  Buckhurst,  and  Sedley,  and  the 
author,  with  many  more;   and  there  went   on,  as 


AUDIENCES  OF  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY     235 

the  audience  waited  till  the  pelting  rain  outside  had 
ceased  to  fall,  comment  and  counter-comment  on  the 
merits  of  the  piece  and  of  the  actors.  Etherege  found 
fault  with  the  players,  but  the  public  as  loudly  cen- 
sured the  piece,  condemning  it  as  silly  and  insipid, 
but  allowing  it  to  possess  a  certain  share  of  wit  and 
roguishness. 

From  an  entry  in  the  diary  for  the  21st  of 
December,  1668,  we  learn  that  Lady  Castlemaine 
had  a  double,  who  used  to  appear  at  the  theatre,  to 
the  annoyance  of  my  lady,  and  the  amusement  of  her 
royal  friend.  Indeed,  there  is  a  group  of  illustrations 
of  the  "  front  of  the  stage  ; "  the  house  is  the  duke's, 
the  play  "Macbeth."  "The  king  and  court  there, 
and  we  sat  just  under  them  and  my  Lady  Castle- 
maine, and  close  to  a  woman  that  comes  into  the  pit, 
a  kind  of  a  loose  gossip  that  pretends  to  be  like  her, 
and  is  so,  something.  The  king  and  Duke  of  York 
minded  me,  and  smiled  upon  me,  at  the  handsome 
woman  near  me,  but  it  vexed  me  to  see  Moll  Davies, 
in  a  box  over  the  king's  and  my  Lady  Castlemaine' s, 
look  down  upon  the  king,  and  he  up  to  her ;  and  so 
did  my  Lady  Castlemaine  once,  to  see  who  it  was; 
but  when  she  saw  Moll  Davies,  she  looked  like  fire, 
which  troubled  me." 

To  these  audiences  were  presented  dramatic  pieces 
of  a  very  reprehensible  quality.  Charles  IL  has  been 
more  blamed  than  any  other  individual,  because  of 
this  licentiousness  of  the  stage.  I  have  before  ven- 
tured to  intimate,  that  the  long  accepted  idea  that 
the  court  of  Charles  IL  corrupted  English  society, 
and  that  it  did  so  especially  through  patronising  the 
licentiousness  of  poets  and  the  stage,  seems  to  me 


236  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

untenable.  From  of  old  there  had  been  a  corrupt 
society,  and  a  society  protesting  against  the  cor- 
ruption. Before  Charles  made  his  first  visit  to  the 
theatre,  there  was  lying  in  Newgate  the  ex-royalist, 
but  subsequently  Puritan  poet,  George  Withers.  In 
the  dedication  of  his  "Hallelujah,"  in  1641,  he  thus 
describes  the  contemporary  condition  pf  society : 
"  So  innumerable  are  the  foolish  and  profane  songs 
now  delighted  in,  to  the  dishonour  of  our  language 
and  religion,  that  hallelujahs  and  pious  meditations 
are  almost  out  of  use  and  fashion  ;  yea,  not  at  private 
only,  but  at  our  public  feasts,  and  civil  meetings  also, 
scurrilous  and  obscene  songs  are  impudently  sung, 
without  respecting  the  reverend  presence  of  matrons, 
virgins,  magistrates,  or  divines.  Nay,  sometimes  in 
their  despite  they  are  called  for,  sung,  and  acted  with 
such  abominable  gesticulations,  as  are  very  offensive 
to  all  modest  hearers  and  beholders,  and  fitting  only 
to  be  exhibited  at  the  diabolical  assemblies  of  Bac- 
chus, Venus,  or  Priapus !  " 

In  the  collection  of  hymns,  under  this  title  of 
"  Hallelujah,"  there  is  a  hymn  for  every  condition  in 
and  circumstance  of  life,  from  the  king  to  the  tailor; 
from  a  hymn  for  the  use  of  two  ardent  lovers,  to  a 
spiritual  song  of  grateful  resignation  "  for  a  widower 
or  a  widow  deprived  of  a  troublesome  yokefellow ! " 
There  is  none  for  the  player,  but  there  is  this  hit  at 
the  poets  who  supplied  him  with  unseemly  phrases, 
and  the  flattering  friends  who  crowned  such  bards : 

"  Blasphemous  fancies  are  infused, 
All  holy  new  things  are  expell'd, 
He  that  hath  most  profanely  mused, 
Is  famed  as  having  most  excelled ; 


AUDIENCES  OF  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY     237 

Such  are  those  poets  in  these  days, 
Who  vent  the  fumes  of  lust  and  wine, 

Then  crown  each  other's  heads  with  bays, 
As  if  their  poenas  were  divine." 

Against  the  revived  fashion  of  licentious  plays, 
some  of  the  wisest  men  among  theatrical  audiences 
protested  loudly.  No  man  raised  his  voice  with 
greater  urgency  than  Evelyn.  Within  six  years  of 
the  Restoration,  he,  who  was  in  frequency  of  play- 
going  only  second  to  Pepys,  but  as  sharp  an  observer 
and  a  graver  censor  than  the  Admiralty  clerk,  ad- 
dressed a  letter  to  Lord  Combury  on  this  important 
subject.  The  letter  was  written  a  few  weeks  previous 
to  the  Lent  season  of  1665,  and  the  writer  mourns 
over  a  scandal  less  allowed  in  any  city  of  Christen- 
dom, than  in  the  metropolis  of  England ;  namely, 
"  the  frequency  of  our  theatrical  pastimes  during  the 
indiction  of  Lent.  Here  in  London,"  he  says,  "there 
were  more  wicked  and  obscene  plays  permitted  than 
in  all  the  world  besides.  At  Paris  three  days,  at 
Rome  two  weekly,  and  at  the  other  cities,  Florence, 
Venice,  etc.,  only  at  certain  jolly  periods  of  the  year, 
and  that  not  without  some  considerable  emolument 
to  the  public,  while  our  interludes  here  are  every  day 
alike ;  so  that  the  ladies  and  gallants  come  reeking 
from  the  play  late  on  Saturday  night "  (was  Saturday 
then  a  fashionable  day  for  late  performances  ?)  "  to 
their  Sunday  devotions ;  and  the  ideas  of  the  farce 
possess  their  fancies  to  the  infinite  prejudice  of  devo- 
tion, besides  the  advantages  it  gives  to  our  reproachful 
blasphemers."  Evelyn,  however,  does  not  pursue  his 
statement  to  a  logical  exclusion.  He  proposes  to 
close  the  houses  on  Friday  and  Saturday,  or  to  repre- 


23S  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

sent  plays  on  these  nights  only  for  the  benefit  of 
paupers  in  or  out  of  the  workhouses.  Remembering 
rather  the  actresses  who  disgraced  womanhood,  than 
such  an  exemplary  and  reproachless  pair  as  Betterton 
and  his  wife,  he  recommends  robbery  of  the  "de- 
bauched comedians,"  as  he  calls  them  without 
scruple.  What  if  they  be  despoiled  of  a  hundred 
or  so  a  year  ?  They  will  still  enjoy  more  than  they 
were  ever  born  to ;  and  the  sacrifice,  he  quaintly  says, 
will  consecrate  their  scarce  allowable  impertinences. 
He  adds,  with  a  seriousness  which  implies  his  censure 
of  the  royal  approval  of  the  bad  taste  which  had 
brought  degradation  on  the  stage :  "  Plays  are  now 
become  with  us  a  licentious  excess  and  a  vice,  and 
need  severe  censors,  that  should  look  as  well  to  their 
morality  as  to  their  lives  and  numbers." 

This  grave  and  earnest  censor,  however,  allowed 
himself  to  be  present  at  stage  representations  which 
he  condemns.  He  objects  but  does  not  refrain.  He 
witnesses  masques  at  court  and  says  little ;  enjoys 
his  play,  and  denounces  the  enjoyment,  in  his  diary, 
when  he  reaches  home.  He  has  as  acute  an  eye  on 
the  behaviour  of  the  ladies,  especially  among  the  audi- 
ence, as  for  what  is  being  uttered  on  the  stage.  "  I 
saw  the  tragedy  of  *  Horace,' "  he  tells  us,  in  February, 
1668,  "written  by  the  virtuous  Mrs.  Phillips,  acted 
before  their  Majesties.  Betwixt  each  act  a  masque 
and  antique  dance."  Then  speaking  of  the  audience, 
where  the  king's  "lady"  was  wont  to  outblaze  the 
king's  "wife,"  he  adds:  "The  excessive  gallantry 
of  the  ladies  was  infinite :  those  especially  on  that 
.  .  .  Castlemaine,  esteemed  at  ;^40,(X)0  and  more, 
far  outshining  the  queen."     Later  in  the  year  he  is 


AUDIENCES  OF  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY     239 

at  a  new  play  of  Dryden's,  "  with  several  of  my  rela- 
tions." He  describes  the  plot  as  "foolish  and  very 
profane.  It  afflicted  me,"  he  continues,  "  to  see  how 
the  stage  was  degenerated  and  polluted  by  the 
licentious  times." 

When  forming  part  of  the  audience,  by  invitation 
of  the  lord  chamberlain,  at  the  court  plays,  at  White- 
hall, in  September,  1666,  Evelyn  uses  as  freely  his 
right  of  judgment.  He  sat  ill  at  ease  in  the  public 
theatres,  because  they  were  abused,  he  says,  "  to  an 
atheistical  liberty."  The  invitation  to  see  Lord 
Broghill's  "  Mustapha "  played  before  the  king  and 
queen,  in  presence  of  a  splendid  court,  was  a  com- 
mand. Evelyn  attended;  but  as  he  looked  around, 
he  bethought  him  of  the  London  that  was  lying  in 
charred  ruins,  and  he  sorrowingly  records  his  disap- 
proval of  "any  such  pastime  in  a  time  of  such  judg- 
ments and  calamities."  With  better  times  come 
weaker  censures  on  these  amusements ;  and  the 
representation  of  the  "  Conquest  of  Granada,"  at 
Whitehall,  in  167 1,  wins  his  admiration  for  the  "very 
glorious  scenes  and  perspectives,  the  work  of  Mr. 
Streeter,  who  well  understands  it."  In  the  following 
year,  although  not  frequenting  court  plays,  he  takes 
a  whole  bevy  of  maids  of  honour  from  court  to  the 
play.  Among  them  was  one  of  whom  he  makes 
especial  mention,  on  account  of  her  many  and  ex- 
traordinary virtues,  which  had  gained  his  especial 
esteem.  This  grave  maid,  among  the  too  vivacious 
ladies  whom  Evelyn  'squired  to  an  afternoon's  play, 
was  Mistress  Blagg,  better  known  to  us  from  Evelyn's 
graceful  sketch  of  her  Ufe,  as  Mrs.  Godolphin. 

Mrs.    Blagg  was   herself  not   the   less  a  lovely 


240  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

actress  for  being  a  discreet  and  virtuous  young  lady. 
In  1675  Evelyn  saw  her  act  in  Crovvne's  masque- 
comedy,  "  Calisto,  or  the  Chaste  Nymph."  His 
friend  acted  in  a  noble  but  mixed  company,  —  all 
ladies,  —  namely,  the  Ladies  Mary  and  Anne,  after- 
ward Queens  of  England,  the  Lady  Henrietta  Went- 
worth,  afterward  the  evilly  impelled  favourite  of  the 
Duke  of  Monmouth,  and  Miss  Jennings,  subsequently 
the  sharp-witted  wife  of  the  great  Duke  of  Marlbor- 
ough, There  were  others  of  less  note,  with  profes- 
sional actresses  to  aid  them,  while  a  corps  de  ballet 
of  peers  and  nymphs  of  greater  or  less  repute  danced 
between  the  acts.  For  the  piece  or  for  the  interludes 
Evelyn  had  less  admiration  than  he  had  for  Mrs. 
Blagg's  splendour.  She  had  about  her,  he  informs 
us,  ;^20,ooo  worth  of  jewels,  of  which  she  lost  one 
worth  about  y^8o,  borrowed  of  the  Countess  of  Suf- 
folk. "The  press  was  so  great,"  he  adds,  "that  it 
is  a  wonder  she  lost  no  more ; "  and  the  intimation 
that  "The  duke"  (of  York)  "made  it  good,"  shows 
that  Mrs.  Blagg  was  fortunate  in  possessing  the 
esteem  of  that  not  too  liberal  prince.  The  entire 
stage  arrangements  at  Whitehall  were  not  invariably 
of  a  liberal  character,  and  the  audiences  must  have 
had,  on  some  occasions,  an  uncourtly  aspect ; 
"people  giving  money  to  come  in,"  he  writes  in  this 
same  year,  1675,  "which  was  very  scandalous,  and 
never  so  before  at  court  diversions." 

Of  the  turbulence  of  audiences  in  those  days, 
there  are  many  evidences  on  record.  It  was  some- 
times provoked,  at  others  altogether  unjustifiable, 
and  always  more  savage  than  humourous.  In  1669 
Mrs.  Corey  gratified  Lady  Castlemaine  by  giving  an 


AUDIENCES  OF  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY     241 

imitation  of  Lady  Harvey  throughout  the  whole  of 
the  part  of  Sempronia  in  "  Catiline's  Conspiracy." 
Lady  Harvey,  much  excited,  had  influence  enough 
with  her  brother,  Edward  Montagu,  lord  chamberlain, 
to  induce  him  to  lock  Mrs.  Corey  up  for  her  imperti- 
nence. On  the  other  hand,  Lady  Castlemaine  had 
still  greater  influence  with  the  king ;  and  not  only 
was  Mrs.  Corey  released,  but  she  was  "ordered  to 
act  it  again  worse  than  ever."  Doll  Common,  as 
the  actress  was  called,  for  her  ability  in  playing  that 
part  in  the  "  Alchymist,"  repeated  the  imitation  with 
the  required  extravagance,  but  not  without  opposi- 
tion ;  for  Lady  Harvey  had  hired  a  number  of  per- 
sons, some  of  whom  hissed  Doll,  while  others  pelted 
her  with  fruit,  and  the  king  looked  on  the  while 
amazed  at  the  contending  factions,  whose  quarrels 
subsequently  brought  him  much  weariness  in  the 
settling. 

Then,  again,  much  disturbance  often  arose  from 
noisy,  financial  squabbles.  It  was  the  custom  to 
return  the  price  of  admission  to  all  persons  who  left 
the  theatre  before  the  close  of  the  first  act.  Conse- 
quently many  shabby  persons  were  wont  to  force 
their  way  in  without  paying,  on  the  plea  that  they 
did  not  intend  to  remain  beyond  the  time  limited. 
Thence  much  noisy  remonstrance  on  the  part  of  the 
doorkeepers,  who  followed  them  into  the  house ;  and 
therewith  such  derangement  of  the  royal  comfort, 
that  a  special  decree  was  issued  commanding  pay- 
ment to  be  made  on  entering,  but  still  allowing  the 
patron  of  the  drama  to  recover  his  money  if  he  with- 
drew on  or  before  the  close  of  the  first  act. 

But  there  were  greater  scandals  than  these.    On  the 


242  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

2d  of  February,  1679,  there  is  a  really  awful  commo 
tion,  and  imminent  peril  to  house  and  audience  at  the 
duke's  theatre.  The  king's  French  favourite,  the 
Duchess  of  Portsmouth,  is  blazing  with  rouge,  dia- 
monds, and  sharaelessness  in  the  most  conspicuous 
seat  in  the  house.  Some  tipsy  gentlemen  in  the 
street  hard  by  hear  of  her  wit  and  handsome  pres- 
ence, and  the  morality  of  these  drunkards  is  straight- 
way incensed.  The  house  is  panic-stricken  at  seeing 
these  virtuous  Goths  rushing  into  the  pit  with  drawn 
swords  in  one  hand,  —  flaming,  smoking,  ill-smelling 
torches  in  the  other,;  and  with  vituperative  cries 
against  "the  Duchess  of  Portsmouth  and  other 
persons  of  honour."  The  rioters,  not  satisfied  with 
thrusting  their  rapiers  at  the  arms,  sides,  and  legs  of 
the  affrighted  people  in  the  pit,  hurl  their  blazing 
torches  among  the  astounded  actors  on  the  stage ! 
A  panic  and  a  general  flight  ensue.  The  house  is 
saved  from  destruction ;  but  as  it  is  necessary  to 
punish  somebody,  the  king  satisfies  his  sense  of 
justice  by  pressing  hard  upon  the  innocent  actors, 
and  shutting  up  the  house  during  the  royal  pleasure ! 
Much  liquor,  sharp  swords,  and  angry  tempers  com- 
bined to  interrupt  the  enjoyment  of  many  a  peaceful 
audience.  An  angry  word  passed,  one  April  evening 
of  1682,  between  Charles  Dering,  the  son  of  Sir 
Edward,  and  the  hot-blooded  young  Welshman,  Mr. 
Vaughan,  led  to  recrimination  and  sword  drawing. 
The  two  young  fellows,  not  having  elbow-room  in 
the  pit,  clambered  on  to  the  stage  and  fought  there, 
to  the  greater  comfort  of  the  audience,  and  with  a 
more  excited  fury  on  the  part  of  the  combatants. 
The  stage  was  that  of  the  duke's  company,  then 


AUDIENCES  OF  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY     243 

playing  in  Dorset  Gardens.  The  adversaries  fought 
on  till  Bering  got  a  thrust  from  the  Welshman  which 
stretched  him  on  the  boards ;  whereupon  the  author- 
ities intervened,  as  there  was  no  more  mischief 
to  be  done,  and  put  Master  Vaughan  under  re- 
straint till  Bering's  wound  was  declared  not  to  be 
mortal. 

The  tiring-rooms  of  the  actresses  were  then  open 
to  the  fine  gentlemen  who  frequented  the  house. 
They  stood  by  at  the  mysteries  of  dressing,  and 
commented  on  what  they  beheld  and  did  not  behold 
with  such  breadth  and  coarseness  of  wit,  that  the 
more  modest,  or  least  impudent,  ladies  sent  away 
their  little  handmaidens.  The  dressing  over,  the 
amateurs  lounged  into  the  house,  talked  loudly  with 
the  pretty  orange-girls,  listened  when  it  suited  them, 
and  at  the  termination  of  the  piece  crowded  again 
into  the  tiring-room  of  the  most  favourite  and  least 
scrupulous  of  the  actresses.  Among  these  gallants 
who  thus  oscillated  between  the  pit  and  the  dressing 
bowers  of  the  ladies  was  a  Sir  Hugh  Middleton,  who 
is  not  to  be  confounded  with  his  namesake  of  the 
New  River.  On  the  second  Saturday  of  February, 
1667,  Sir  Hugh  was  among  the  joyous  damsels 
dressing  for  the  play  behind  the  stage  of  Old 
Brury.  The  knight  was  so  unpleasantly  critical  on 
the  nymphs  before  him,  that  one  of  them,  sharp- 
tongued  Beck  Marshall,  bade  him  keep  among  the 
ladies  of  the  Duke's  House  since  he  did  not  approve 
of  those  who  served  the  king.  Sir  Hugh  burst  out 
with  a  threat  that  he  would  kick,  or  what  was  worse, 
hire  his  footman  to  kick  her.  The  pretty  but  angry 
Rebecca  nursed  her  wrath  all  Sunday ;  but  on  Mon- 


244  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

day  she  notified  the  ungallant  outrage  to  the  great 
champion  of  insulted  dames,  the  king.  Nothing 
immediately  came  of  it ;  and  on  Tuesday  there  was 
Sir  Hugh  glowering  at  her  from  the  front  of  the 
house,  and  waylaying  her  as  she  was  leaving  it  with 
a  friend.  Sir  Hugh  whispers  a  ruffianly  looking  fellow, 
who  follows  the  actress,  and  presses  upon  her  so 
closely,  that  she  is  moved  by  a  double  fear,  —  that 
he  is  about  to  rob,  and,  perhaps,  stab  her.  A  little 
scream  scares  the  bravo  for  a  minute  or  so.  He 
skulks  away,  but  anon  slinks  back ;  and,  armed  with 
the  first  offensive  missile  he  could  pick  up  in  a  Drury 
Lane  gutter,  he  therewith  anoints  the  face  and  hair 
of  the  much  shocked  actress,  and  then,  like  the  val- 
iant fellows  of  his  trade,  takes  to  his  heels.  The 
next  day,  sweet  as  Anadyomene  rising  from  the  sea, 
the  actress  appeared  before  the  king,  and  charged 
Sir  Hugh  with  being  the  abettor  of  this  gross  out- 
rage. How  the  knight  was  punished  the  record  in 
the  state  paper  office  does  not  say ;  but  about  a  fort- 
night later  a  royal  decree  was  issued  which  prohibited 
gentlemen  from  entering  the  tiring-rooms  of  the 
ladies  of  the  king's  theatre.  For  some  nights  the 
gallants  sat  ill  at  ease  among  the  audience;  but 
the  journals  of  the  period  show  that  the  nymphs 
must  have  been  as  little  pleased  with  this  arrange- 
ment as  the  fine  gentlemen  themselves,  who  soon 
found  their  way  back  to  pay  the  homage  of  flattery 
to  the  most  insatiable  of  goddesses. 

Not  that  all  the  homage  was  paid  to  the  latter. 
The  wits  loved  to  assemble,  after  the  play  was  done, 
in  the  dressing-rooms  of  the  leading  actors  with 
whom   they  most   cared   to   cultivate   an   intimacy. 


AUDIENCES  OF  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY     245 

Much  company  often  congregated  here,  generally 
with  the  purpose  of  assigning  meetings  where  fur- 
ther enjoyment  might  be  pursued. 

Then,  when  it  was  holiday  with  the  legislature,  the 
house  was  filled  with  Parliament  men.  On  one  of 
these  occasions  Pepys  records  *'  how  a  gentleman 
of  good  habit,  sitting  just  before  us,  eating  of  some 
fruit  in  the  midst  of  the  play,  did  drop  down  as  dead ; 
but,  with  much  ado,  Orange  Moll  did  thrust  her  fin- 
ger down  his  throat,  and  brought  him  to  life  again." 
This  was  an  incident  of  the  year  1667. 

Returning  to  the  front  of  the  stage,  we  find  the 
ladies  in  the  boxes  subjected  to  the  audible  criticisms 
of  "the  little  cockerels  of  the  pit,"  as  Ravenscroft 
calls  them,  with  whom  the  more  daring  damsels 
entered  into  a  smart  contest  of  repartees.  As  the 
"playhouse'* was  then  the  refuge  of  all  idle  young 
people,  these  wit-combats  were  listened  to  with  inter- 
est from  the  town  fops  to  the  rustic  young  squires 
who  came  to  the  theatre  in  cordovant  gloves,  and 
were  quite  unconscious  of  poisoning  the  affected  fine 
ladies  with  the  smell  of  them.  The  poets  used  to 
assert  that  all  the  wit  of  the  pittites  was  stolen  from 
the  plays  which  they  read  or  saw  acted.  It  seemed 
the  privilege  of  the  box-loungers  to  have  none,  or  to 
perform  other  services,  namely,  to  sit  all  the  evening 
by  a  mistress,  or  to  blaze  from  "  Fop's  comer,"  or  to 
mark  the  modest  women  by  noting  those  who  did  not 
use  their  fans  through  a  whole  play,  nor  turn  aside 
their  heads,  nor,  by  blushing,  discover  more  gfuilt 
than  modesty.  Thrice  happy  was  she  who  found 
the  greatest  number  of  slaves  at  the  door  of  her 
box,  waiting  obsequiously  to  hand  or  escort  her  to 


246  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

her  chair.  These  beaux  were  hard  to  fix,  so  erratic 
were  they  in  their  habits.  They  ran,  as  Gatty  perti- 
nently has  it,  "  from  one  playhouse  to  the  other  play- 
house ;  and  if  they  like  neither  the  play  nor  the 
women,  they  seldom  stay  any  longer  than  the  comb- 
ing of  their  periwigs,  or  a  whisper  or  two  with  a 
friend,  and  then  they  cock  their  caps,  and  out  they 
strut  again."  With  fair  and  witty  strangers  these 
gay  fellows,  their  eyebrows  and  periwigs  redolent  of 
the  essence  of  orange  and  jasmine,  entered  into  con- 
versation, till  a  gentleman's  name,  called  by  a  door- 
keeper in  the  passage,  summoned  him  to  impatient 
companions  waiting  for  him  outside ;  when  he  left 
the  "censure"  of  his  appearance  to  critical  ob- 
servers, like  those  who  ridiculed  the  man  of  mode, 
for  "his  gloves  drawn  up  to  his  elbows  and  his  peri- 
wig more  exactly  curled  than  a  lady's  head  newly 
dressed  for  a  ball." 

Of  the  vizard-masks,  Gibber  tells  the  whole  history 
in  a  few  words :  "  I  remember  the  ladies  were  then 
observed  to  be  decently  afraid  of  venturing  barefaced 
to  a  new  comedy,  till  they  had  been  assured  they 
might  do  it  without  insult  to  their  modesty;  or,  if 
their  curiosity  were  too  strong  for  their  patience,  they 
took  care  at  least  to  save  appearances,  and  rarely 
came  in  the  first  days  of  acting  but  in  masks,  which 
custom,  however,  had  so  many  ill  consequences  attend- 
ing it,  that  it  has  been  abolished  these  many  years." 

The  poets  sometimes  accused  the  ladies  of  blushing, 
not  because  of  offence,  but  from  constraint  on  laugh- 
ter. Farquhar's  Pindress  says  to  Lucinda,  "Didn't 
you  chide  me  for  not  putting  stronger  laces  in  your 
stays,  when  you   had   broken   one   as   strong  as  a 


AUDIENCES  OF  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY     247 

hempen  cord  with  contaming  a  violent  ti-hee  at  a 
jest  in  the  last  play  ? " 

Gibber  describes  the  beaux  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury as  being  of  quite  a  different  stamp  from  the 
more  modern  sort.  The  former  "had  more  of  the 
stateliness  of  the  peacock  in  their  mien,  whereas 
the  latter  seemed  to  place  their  highest  emulation  in 
imitating  "  the  pert  air  of  a  lapwing."  The  greatest 
possible  compliment  was  paid  to  Gibber  by  the  hand- 
some, witty,  blooming  young  fop,  Brett,  who  was  so 
enchanted  with  the  wig  the  former  wore  as  Sir 
Novelty  Fashion  in  "  Love's  Last  Shift,"  that  fancy- 
ing the  wearing  it  might  ensure  him  success  among 
the  ladies,  he  went  around  to  Gibber's  dressing-room, 
and  entered  into  negotiations  for  the  purchase  of 
that  wonderful  cataract  periwig.  The  fine  gentle- 
men among  the  audience  had,  indeed,  the  credit  of 
being  less  able  to  judge  of  a  play  than  of  a  peruke ; 
and  Dryden  speaks  of  an  individual  as  being  "as 
invincibly  ignorant  as  a  town-sop  judging  of  a  new 
play." 

Lord  Foppington,  in  1697,  did  not  pretend  to  be 
a  beau ;  but  he  remarks,  "  a  man  must  endeavour  to 
look  wholesome,  lest  he  make  so  nauseous  a  figure 
in  the  side-box,  the  ladies  should  be  compelled  to 
turn  their  eyes  upon  the  play,"  It  was  the  "  thing  " 
to  look  upon  the  company  unless  some  irresistible 
attraction  drew  attention  to  the  stage ;  and  the  cur- 
tain down,  the  beau  became  active  in  the  service  of 
the  ladies  generally.  "  Till  nine  o'clock,"  says  Lord 
Foppington,  "I  amuse  myself  by  looking  on  the 
company,  and  usually  dispose  of  one  hour  more  in 
leading  thera  out." 


248  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

Some  fine  gentlemen  were  unequal  to  such  gal- 
lantry. At  these  Southerne  glances  in  his  "  Sir 
Anthony  Love,"  where  he  describes  the  hard  drinkers 
who  ♦'  go  to  a  tavern  to  swallow  a  drunkenness,  and 
then  to  a  play,  to  talk  over  their  liquor."  And  these 
had  their  counterparts  in  — 

"  the  youngsters  of  a  noisy  pit, 
Whose  tongues  and  mistresses  outran  their  wit" 

It  was,  however,  much  the  same  in  the  boxes,  where 
the  beaux'  oath  was  "zauns,"  it  being  token  of  a 
rustic  blasphemer  to  say  "zounds;"  and  where, 
though  a  country  squire  might  say,  "  bless  us ! "  it 
was  the  mark  of  a  man  of  fashion  to  cry,  "dem 
me!" 

With  such  personages  in  pit  and  boxes,  we  may 
rest  satisfied  that  there  was  a  public  to  match  in 
the  gallery  —  a  peculiar  as  well  as  a  general  public. 

A  line  in  a  prologue  of  the  year  1672,  "The 
stinking  footman's  sent  to  keep  your  places,"  alludes 
to  a  custom  by  which  the  livery  profited.  Toward 
the  close  of  the  century,  the  upper  gallery  of  Drury 
Lane  was  opened  to  footmen,  gratis.  They  were 
supposed  to  be  in  attendance  on  their  masters,  but 
these  rather  patronised  the  other  house,  and  as 
Drury  could  not  attract  the  nobility,  it  courted  the 
favour  of  their  not  very  humble  servants.  Pre- 
viously, the  lackeys  were  admitted  after  the  close 
of  the  fourth  act  of  the  play.  They  became  the 
most  clamorous  critics  in  the  house.  It  was  the 
custom,  when  these  fellows  passed  the  money-taker, 
to  name  their  master,  who  was  supposed  to  be  in  the 
boxes ;  but  many  frauds  were  practised.     A  stalwart. 


AUDIENCES  OF  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY     249 

gold-laced,  thick-calved,  irreverent  lackey  swaggered 
past  money  and  check-taker,  one  afternoon,  and  named 

"the  Lord ,"  adding  the  name  which  the  Jews 

of  old  would  never  utter,  out  of  fear  and  rever- 
ence.    "The  Lord !"  said  the  money-taker 

to  his  colleague,  after  the  saucy  footman  had  flung 
by,  "who  is  he?"  "Can't  say,"  was  the  reply; 
"some  poor  Scotch  lord,  I  suppose!"  Such  is  an 
alleged  sample  of  the  ignorance  and  the  blasphemy 
of  the  period. 

Returning  to  the  pit,  I  find,  with  the  critics  and 
other  good  men  there,  a  sprinkling  of  clerical  gentle- 
men, especially  of  chaplains  ;  their  patrons  perhaps 
being  in  the  boxes.  In  the  papers  of  the  day,  in 
the  year  1697,  I  read  of  a  little  incident  which  illus- 
trates social  matters,  and  which,  probably,  did  not 
much  trouble  the  theatrical  cleric  who  went  to  the 
pit  so  strangely  provided.  "  There  was  found,"  says 
the  paragraph,  "in  the  pit  of  the  playhouse,  Drury 
Lane,  Covent  Garden,  on  Whitsun  eve,  a  qualifica- 
tion, signed  by  the  Right  Honourable  the  Lord 
Dartmouth  to  the  Reverend  Mr.  Nicholson,  to  be 
his  chaplain  extraordinary ;  the  said  qualification  be- 
ing wrapped  up  in  a  black  taffety  cap,  together  with 
a  bottle-screw,  a  knotting-needle,  and  a  ball  of  sky- 
colour  and  white  knotting.  If  the  said  Mr.  Nichol- 
son will  repair  to  the  pit-keeper's  house,  in  Vinegar 
Yard,  at  the  Crooked  Billet,  he  shall  have  the  mov- 
ables restored,  giving  a  reasonable  gratitude." 

Probably  Mr.  Nicholson  did  not  claim  his  qualifi- 
cation. His  patron  was  son  of  the  Lord  Dartmouth 
who  corresponded  with  James  II.  while  expressing 
allegiance   to   William    III.,   and   was   subsequently 


250  THEIR  MAJESTIES'   SERVANTS 

Queen  Anne's  secretary  of  state,  and  the  annotator 
of  Burnet's  "  History  of  his  Own  Times." 

The  audiences  of  King  William's  time  were  quick 
at  noticing  and  applying  political  allusions ;  and 
government  looked  as  sharply  after  the  dramatic 
poets  as  it  did  after  the  Jacobite  plotters.  When 
much  intercourse  was  going  on  between  the  exiled 
king  at  St.  Germains  and  his  adherents  in  this 
country,  a  Colonel  Mottley  (of  whose  son,  as  a  drama- 
tist, I  shall  have  occasion  to  speak  in  a  future  page), 
was  sent  over  by  James  with  despatches.  The  Earl 
of  Nottingham  laid  watch  for  him  at  the  Blue  Posts, 
in  the  Haymarket,  but  the  secretary's  officers  missed 
the  colonel,  seizing  in  his  place  a  Cornish  gentleman, 
named  Tredenham,  who  was  seated  in  a  room,  sur- 
rounded by  papers,  and  waiting  for  the  colonel. 

Tredenham  and  the  documents  were  conveyed  in 
custody  before  the  earl,  to  whom  the  former  ex- 
plained that  he  was  a  poet,  sketching  out  a  play, 
that  the  papers  seized  formed  portions  of  the  piece, 
and  that  he  had  nothing  to  do  with  plots  against  his 
Majesty  de  facto.  Daniel  Finch,  however,  was  as 
careful  to  read  the  roughly  sketched  play,  as  if  it  had 
been  the  details  of  a  conspiracy ;  and  then  the  author 
was  summoned  before  him.  "Well,  Mr.  Treden- 
ham," said  he,  "  I  have  perused  your  play,  and  heard 
your  statement,  and  as  I  can  find  no  trace  of  a  plot 
in  either,  I  think  you  may  go  free." 

The  sincerity  of  the  audiences  of  those  days  is 
something  doubtful,  if  that  be  true  which  Dryden 
affirms,  that  he  observed,  namely,  that  "in  all  our 
tragedies  the  audience  cannot  forbear  laughing  when 
the  actors  are  to  die :  'tis  the  most  comic  part  of  the 


AUDIENCES  OF  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY     251 

whole  play."  He  says  all  our  tragedies;  but  we 
know  that  such  was  not  the  case  when  the  heroes 
of  Shakespeare,  represented  by  Better  ton.  Hart,  or 
Harris,  suffered  mimic  dissolution,  and  it  is  but  a  fair 
suggestion  that  it  was  only  in  the  bombast  and 
fustian  tragedies,  in  which  death  was  the  climax  of 
a  comic  situation,  and  treated  bombastically,  that 
the  audiences  were  moved  to  laughter. 

Sincere  or  not,  the  resident  Londoners  were  great 
playgoers,  and  gadders  generally.  I  have  already 
quoted  Bishop  Heckett  on  this  matter.  Sermons 
thus  testify  to  a  matter  of  fashion.  It  appears  from 
a  play,  Dryden's  "Sir  Martin  Marall,"  that  if  Lon- 
doners were  the  permanent  patrons,  the  country 
"  quality  "  looked  for  an  annual  visit.  At  the  present 
time  it  is  the  visitors  and  not  the  residents  in  Lon- 
don who  most  frequent  the  theatre.  "  I  came  up, 
as  we  country  gentlewomen  use,  at  an  Easter  term, 
to  the  destruction  of  tarts  and  cheesecakes,  to  see 
a  new  play,  buy  a  new  gown,  take  a  turn  in  the  park, 
and  so  down  again  to  sleep  with  my  forefathers." 

This  resort  to  the  theatres  displeased  better  men 
than  nonjuring  Collier.  Mirthful-minded  South,  he 
who  preached  to  the  Merchant  Tailors  of  the  rem- 
nant that  should  be  saved,  calls  theatres  "those 
spiritual  pest-houses,  where  scarce  anything  is  to  be 
heard  or  seen  but  what  tends  to  the  corruption  of 
good  manners,  and  from  whence  not  one  of  a  thou- 
sand returns  but  infected  with  the  love  of  vice,  or 
at  least  with  the  hatred  of  it  very  much  abated  from 
what  it  was  before.  And  that,  I  assure  you,  is  no 
inconsiderable  point  gained  by  the  tempter,  as  those 
who  have  any  experience  of  their  own  heart  suffi- 


aSa  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

ciently  know.  He  who  has  no  mind  to  trade  with 
the  devil,  should  be  so  wise  as  to  keep  away  from 
his  shop,"  South  objects  to  a  corrupt,  not  to  a 
"well-bred  stage." 

Yet  South,  like  Collier  later,  laid  to  the  scene 
much  of  the  sin  of  the  age. 

If  we  were  to  judge  of  the  character  of  women  by 
the  comedies  of  the  last  half  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, we  might  conclude  that  they  were  all,  without 
exception,  either  constantly  at  the  play,  or  constantly 
wishing  to  be  there.  But  the  Marquis  of  Halifax,  in 
his  "Advice  to  a  Daughter,"  shows  that  they  were 
only  a  class.  "Some  ladies,"  he  says,  "are  bespoke 
for  merry  meetings,  as  Bessus  was  for  duels.  They 
are  engaged  in  a  circle  of  idleness,  where  they  turn 
round,  for  the  whole  year,  without  the  interruption 
of  a  serious  hour.  They  know  all  the  players*  names, 
and  are  intimately  acquainted  with  all  the  booths  at 
Bartholomew  Fair.  The  spring,  that  bringeth  out 
flies  and  fools,  maketh  them  inhabitants  of  Hyde 
Park,  In  the  winter,  they  are  an  encumbrance  to 
the  playhouse,  and  the  ballast  of  the  drawing- 
room." 

We  may  learn  how  the  playhouse,  encumbered  by 
the  fast  ladies  of  bygone  years,  stood,  and  what  were 
the  prospects  of  the  stage  at  this  time,  by  looking 
into  a  private  epistle.  A  few  lines  in  a  letter  from 
"  Mr.  Vanbrook  "  (afterward  Sir  John  Vanbrugh)  to 
the  Earl  of  Manchester,  and  written  on  Christmas 
day,  1699,  will  show  the  position  and  hopes  of  the 
stage,  as  that  century  was  closing.  "  Miss  Evans," 
he  writes,  "the  dancer  at  the  new  playhouse,  is 
dead;  a  fever  slew  her  in  eight  and  forty  hours. 


AUDIENCES  OF  THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY     253 

She's  much  lamented  by  the  town,  as  well  as  by  the 
house,  who  can't  well  bear  her  loss  ;  matters  running 
very  low  with  'em  this  winter.  If  Congreve's  play 
don't  help  'era  they  are  undone.  'Tis  a  comedy,  and 
will  be  played  about  six  weeks  hence.  Nobody  has 
seen  it  yet."  The  same  letter  informs  us  that  Dick 
Leveridge,  the  bass  singer  of  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields 
Theatre,  was  tarrying  in  Ireland,  rather  than  face 
his  creditors  in  England,  and  that  Doggett  (of  whom 
there  is  no  account  during  the  years  1698,  1699, 
1700)  had  been  playing  for  a  week  at  the  above 
theatre,  for  the  sum  of  j£^o !  This  is  the  first 
instance  I  know  of,  of  the  "  starring "  system ;  and 
it  is  remarkable  that  the  above  sum  should  have  been 
given  for  six  nights'  performances,  when  Betterton's 
salary  did  not  exceed  j£$  per  week. 

The  century  closed  ill  for  the  stage.  Congreve's 
play,  "The  Way  of  the  World,"  failed  to  give  it  any 
lustre.  Dancers,  tumblers,  strong  men,  and  quad- 
rupeds, were  called  in  to  attract  the  town ;  and  the 
elephant  at  the  Great  Mogul  in  Fleet  Street  "  drew  " 
to  such  an  extent  that  he  would  have  been  brought 
upon  the  stage  but  for  the  opinion  of  a  master- 
carpenter  that  he  would  pull  the  house  down.  There 
was  an  empty  treasury  at  both  the  theatres.  There 
was  ill-management  at  one,  and  ill-health  (the  declin- 
ing health  of  Betterton)  to  mar  the  other.  And  so 
closes  the  half  century. 


CHAPTER    XIII. 

A    SEVEN    years'    RIVALRY 

The  g^eat  players,  by  giving  action  to  the  poet's 
words,  illustrated  the  quaintly  expressed  idea  of  the 
sweet  singer  who  says : 

*'  What  Thought  can  think  another  Thought  can  mend." 

Nevertheless,  the  theatres  had  not  proved  profit- 
able. The  public  greeted  acrobats  with  louder 
acclaim  than  any  poet.  King  William  cared  more 
to  see  the  feats  of  Kentish  Patagonians  than  to  listen 
to  Shakespeare ;  and,  for  a  time,  Doggett,  by  creat- 
ing laughter,  reaped  more  glittering  reward  than 
Betterton,  by  drawing  tears.  The  first  season,  how- 
ever, of  the  eighteenth  century  was  commenced  with 
great  spirit.  Drury  Lane  opened  with  Gibber's 
"  Love  Makes  a  Man,"  an  adaptation  from  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher.  Gibber  was  the  Glodio ;  Wilks, 
Garlos ;  and  Mrs.  Verbruggen,  Louisa.  Five  other 
new  pieces  were  produced  in  this  brief  season.  This 
was  followed  by  the  "  Humour  of  the  Age,"  a  dull 
comedy,  by  Baker,  who  generally  gave  his  audience 
something  to  laugh  at,  and  showed  some  originality 
in  more  than  one  of  his  five  pieces.  He  was  an 
attorney's  son,  and  an  Oxford  University  man  ;  but 
he  took  to  writing  for  the  stage,  had  an  ephemeral 

254 


A  SEVEN  YEARS'  RIVALRY  25$ 

success,  and  died  early,  in  worse  plight  than  any 
author,  even  in  the  days  when  authors  occasionally 
died  in  evil  condition.  The  third  novelty  was  Settle's 
mad  operatic  tragedy,  the  "  Siege  of  Troy,"  with 
a  procession  in  which  figured  six  white  elephants! 
Griffin  returned  to  the  stage  from  the  army,  with 
"  Captain  "  attached  to  his  name,  and  played  Ulysses. 
The  dulness  and  grandeur  of  Settle's  piece  were 
hardly  relieved  by  Farquhar's  sequel  to  his  "Con- 
stant Couple,"  "  Sir  Harry  Wildair."  The  reputa- 
tion of  the  former  piece  secured  for  the  latter  a  run 
of  nine  nights ;  so  were  successes  calculated  in  those 
early  days.  Wilks  laid  down  Sir  Harry  to  enact 
the  distresses  of  Loraine,  in  Mrs.  Trotter's  new 
play,  "The  Unhappy  Penitent,"  which  gave  way  in 
turn  for  Durfey's  intriguing  comedy,  "The  Bath, 
or  the  Western  Lass,"  in  which  Mrs.  Verbruggen's 
"Gillian  Homebred,"  made  her  the  darling  of  the 
town. 

In  the  same  season,  the  company  at  Lincoln's  Inn 
Fields  produced  a  like  number  of  new  pieces.  In  the 
first,  the  "  Double  Distress,"  Booth,  Verbruggen,  Mrs. 
Barry,  and  Mrs.  Bracegirdle  wasted  their  talents. 
Mrs.  Fix,  the  author,  having  failed  in  this  mixture 
af  rhyme  and  blank  verse,  failed  in  a  greater  degree 
in  her  next  play  in  prose,  the  "  Tsar  of  Muscovy." 
Booth  and  Mrs.  Barry  could  do  nothing  with  such  ma- 
terials. The  masters  forthwith  enacted  the  "  Lady's 
Visiting  Day,"  by  Bumaby.  In  this  comedy  Bet- 
terton  played  the  gallant  lover,  Courtine,  to  the  Lady 
Love^oy  of  Mrs.  Barry,  The  lady  here  would  only 
marry  a  prince.  Courtine  wins  her  as  Prince  Alex- 
ander of  Muscovy :  and  the  audience  laughed  as  they 


256  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

recognised  therein  the  incident  of  the  merry  Lord 
Montagu  wooing  the  mad  Duchess  Dowager  of  Albe- 
marle, as  the  Empress  of  China,  and  marrying  her 
under  that  very  magnificent  dignity,  to  any  inferior  to 
which  the  duchess  had  declared  she  would  not  stoop. 

The  hilarity  of  the  public  was  next  challenged  by 
the  production  of  Granville's  (Lord  Lansdowne)  "Jew 
of  Venice,"  —  "  improved  "  from  Shakespeare,  who 
was  described  as  having  furnished  the  rude  sketches 
which  had  been  amended  and  adorned  by  Granville's 
new  master-strokes ! 

Gildon's  dull  piece  of  Druidism,  "Love's  Victim, 
or  the  Queen  of  Wales,"  appeared  and  failed,  not- 
withstanding its  wonderful  cast ;  but  Corye's  '*  Cure 
for  Jealousy  "  brought  the  list  of  novelties  merrily  to 
a  close ;  for  though  the  audience  saw  no  fun  in  it, 
they  did  in  the  anger  of  the  author,  —  a  little  man, 
with  a  whistle  of  a  voice,  who  abandoned  the  law  for 
the  stage,  and  was  as  weak  an  actor  as  he  was  an 
author.  He  attributed  his  failure  to  the  absurd  ad- 
miration of  the  public  for  Farquhar.  He  was  absurd 
enough  to  say  so  in  print,  and  to  speak  contemptu- 
ously of  poor  George's  "Jubilee  Farce."  In  those 
wicked  days,  literary  men  loved  not  each  other ! 

In  1702,  the  Drury  Lane  company  brought  out 
eight  new  pieces,  and  worked  indefatigably.  They 
commenced  with  Dennis's  "Comical  Gallant," — an 
"  improved  "  edition  of  Shakespeare's  "  Merry  Wives," 
in  which  Powell  made  but  a  sorry  Falstaff.  This 
piece  gave  way  to  one  entirely  original,  and  very 
much  duller,  the  "  Generous  Conqueror,"  of  the  ex- 
fugitive  Jacobite,  Bevil  Higgons.  In  this  poor  play, 
3evil  illustrated  the  right  divine  and  impeccability  of 


A  SEVEN  YEARS'  RIVALRY  257 

his  late  liege  sovereign,  King  James ;  denounced  the 
Revolution,  by  implication ;  did  in  his  only  play  what 
Doctor  Sacheverill  did  in  the  pulpit,  and  made  even 
his  Jacobites  laugh  by  his  bouncing  line,  "  The  gods 
and  godlike  kings  can  do  no  wrong." 

Laughter  more  genuine  might  have  been  expected 
from  the  next  novelty,  Farquhar's  "  Inconstant ; " 
but  that  clever  adaptation  of  Fletcher's  "  Wild  Goose 
Chase,"  with  Wilks  for  young  Mirabel,  did  not  affect 
the  town  so  hilariously  as  I  have  seen  it  do  when 
Charles  Kemble  gracefully,  but  somewhat  too  demon- 
stratively, enacted  the  part  of  that  gay,  silly,  but 
lucky  gentleman.  Still  less  pleased  were  the  public 
with  the  next  play,  tossed  up  for  them  in  a  month, 
and  condemned  in  anight,  Burnaby's  "Moodish  Hus- 
band." Of  course,  this  husband.  Lord  Promise,  is  a 
man  who  loves  his  neighbour's  wife,  and  cares  not  who 
loves  his  own.  An  honest  man  in  this  comedy.  Sir 
Lively  Cringe,  does  not  think  ill  of  married  women, 
and  he  is  made  a  buffoon  and  more,  accordingly. 
When  Lady  Cringe,  in  the  dark,  holds  her  lover 
Lionel  with  one  hand,  her  husband  with  the  other, 
and  declares  that  her  fingers  are  locked  with  those 
of  the  man  she  loves  best  in  the  world.  Sir  Lively 
believes  her.  In  this  wise  did  the  stage  hold  the 
mirror  up  to  nature,  at  the  beginning  of  the  last 
century. 

Not  more  edifying  nor  much  more  successful  was 
Vanbrugh's  "  False  Friend,"  a  comedy  in  which  there 
is  a  murder  enacted  before  the  audience !  What  the 
house  lost  by  it  was  fully  made  up  by  the  unequivocal 
success  of  the  next  new  piece,  the  "  Funeral,  or  Grief 
k  la  Mode."     The  author  was  then  six  and  twenty 


2$$  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

years  of  age ;  this  was  his  first  piece,  and  his  name 
was  Steele.  All  that  was  known  of  him  then  was, 
that  he  was  a  native  of  Dublin,  had  been  fellow  pupil 
at  the  Charterhouse  with  Addison,  had  left  the  uni- 
versity without  a  degree,  and  was  said  to  have  lost 
the  succession  to  an  estate  in  Wexford  by  enlisting 
as  "a  private  gentleman  in  the  Horse  Guards;"  a 
phrase  significant  enough,  as  the  proper  designation 
of  that  body,  at  this  day,  is  "  Gentlemen  of  her  Maj- 
esty's Royal  Horse  Guards."  He  was  the  wildest 
and  wittiest  young  dog  about  town,  when  in  1701  he 
published,  with  a  dedication  to  Lord  Cutts,  to  whom 
he  had  been  private  secretary,  and  through  whom  he 
had  been  appointed  to  a  company  in  Lord  Lucas's 
Fusiliers,  his  "  Christian  Hero,"  a  treatise  in  which  he 
showed  what  he  was  not,  by  showing  what  a  man 
ought  to  be.  It  brought  the  poor  fellow  into  inces- 
sant perplexity,  and  even  peril.  Some  thought  him 
a  hypocrite,  others  provoked  him  as  a  coward,  all 
measured  his  sayings  and  doings  by  his  maxims  in 
his  Christian  Hero,  and  Dick  Steele  was  suffering 
in  the  regard  of  the  town,  when  he  resolved  to  re- 
deem the  character  which  he  could  not  keep  up  to 
the  level  of  his  religious  hero,  by  composing  a  comedy ! 
He  thoroughly  succeeded,  and  there  were  troopers 
enough  in  the  house  to  have  beat  the  rest  of  the 
audience  into  shouting  approbation,  had  they  not 
been  well  inclined  to  do  so,  spontaneously.  The 
"  Funeral "  is  the  merriest  and  the  most  perfect  of 
Steele's  comedies.  The  characters  are  strongly 
marked,  the  wit  genial,  and  not  indecent.  Steele 
was  among  the  first  who  set  about  reforming  the 
licentiousness  of  the   old   comedy.      His   satire  in 


A  SEVEN  YEARS*  RIVALRY  259 

the  "Funeral"  is  not  against  virtue,  but  vice  and 
silliness.  When  the  two  lively  ladies  in  widow's 
weeds  meet,  Steele's  classical  memory  served  him 
with  a  good  illustration.  "  I  protest,  I  wonder,"  says 
Lady  Brampton  (Mrs.  Verbruggen),  "  how  two  of  us 
thus  clad  can  meet  with  a  grave  face."  The  most 
genuine  humour  in  the  piece  was  that  applied  against 
lawyers ;  but  more  especially  in  the  satire  against  un- 
dertakers, and  all  their  mockery  of  woe.  Take  the 
scene  in  which  Sable  (Johnson)  is  giving  instructions 
to  his  men,  and  reviewing  them  the  while :  "  Ha, 
you're  a  little  more  upon  the  dismal.  This  fellow 
has  a  good  mortal  look  —  place  him  near  the  corpse. 
That  wainscot-face  must  be  a-top  o'  the  stairs.  That 
fellow's  almost  in  a  fright,  that  looks  as  if  he  were 
full  of  some  strange  misery,  at  the  end  o'  the  hall ! 
So !  —  But  I'll  fix  you  all  myself.  Let's  have  no 
laughing  now,  on  any  provocation.  Look  yonder  at 
that  hale,  well-looking  puppy !  You  ungrateful 
scoundrel,  didn't  I  pity  you,  take  you  out  of  a  great 
man's  service,  and  show  you  the  pleasure  of  receiving 
wages.?  Didn't  I  give  you  ten,  then  fifteen,  then 
twenty  shillings  a  week,  to  be  sorrowful  ?  And  the 
more  I  give  you  the  gladder  you  are !  "  This  sort  of 
humour  was  new;  no  wonder  it  made  a  sensation. 
Steele  became  the  spoiled  child  of  the  town.  "  Noth- 
ing," said  he,  "  ever  makes  the  town  so  fond  of  a  man 
as  a  successful  play."  Old  Sunderland  and  younger 
Halifax  patronised  Steele  for  his  own,  and  for  Addi- 
son's sake  ;  and  the  author  of  the  new  comedy  re- 
ceived the  appointment  of  writer  of  the  Gazette. 

After  a  closing  of  the  houses  during  Bartholomew 
Fair,  the  Drury  Lane  company  met  again  ;  and  again 


26o  THEIR  MAJESTIES*  SERVANTS 

won  the  town  by  Gibber's  "  She  Would  and  She 
Would  Not."  This  excellent  comedy  contrasts  well 
with  the  same  author's  also  admirable  comedy,  the 
"Careless  Husband."  In  the  latter  there  is  much 
talk  of  action  ;  in  the  former  there  is  much  action 
during  very  good  talk.  There  is  much  fun,  little 
vulgarity,  sharp  epigrams  on  the  manners  and 
morals  of  the  times,  good-humoured  satire  against 
popery,  and  a  succession  of  incidents  which  never 
flags  from  the  rise  to  the  fall  of  the  curtain.  The 
plot  may  be  not  altogether  original,  and  there  is  an 
occasional  incorrectness  in  the  local  colour  ;  but  taken 
as  a  whole,  it  is  a  very  amusing  comedy,  and  it  kept 
the  stage  even  longer  than  Steele's  "  Funeral." 

Far  less  successful  was  Drury  with  the  last  and 
eighth  new  play  of  this  season,  Farquhar's  "  Twin 
Rivals,"  for  the  copyright  of  which  the  author  re- 
ceived jCi$  6s.  from  Tonson.  Farquhar,  perhaps, 
took  more  pains  with  this  than  with  any  of  his  plays, 
and  has  received  praise  in  return ;  but  after  Steele 
and  Gibber's  comedies,  the  "  Twin  Rivals  "  had  only 
what  the  French  call  a  succ^s  d'estime. 

To  the  eight  pieces  of  Drury,  Lincoln's  Inn  op- 
posed half  a  dozen,  only  one  of  which  has  come  down 
to  our  times,  namely,  Rowe's  "  Tamerlane,"  with  which 
the  company  opened  the  season  :  Tamerlane,  Better- 
ton  ;  Bajazet,  Verbruggen ;  Axalla,  Booth ;  Aspasia, 
Mrs.  Barry.  In  this  piece,  Rowe  left  sacred  for  pro- 
fane history,  and  made  his  tragedy  so  politically  al- 
lusive to  Louis  XIV.  in  the  character  of  Bajazet,  and 
to  William  III.  in  Tamerlane,  that  it  was  for  many 
years  represented  at  each  theatre  on  every  recurring 
4th  and  5th  of  November,  the  anniversary  of  the 


A  SEVEN  YEARS'  RIVALRY  «6i 

birth  and  of  the  landing  of  King  William.  In  Dublin, 
the  anniversary  of  the  great  delivery  from  "popery 
and  wooden  shoes,"  was  marked  by  a  piece  of  gal- 
lantry on  the  part  of  the  lord  lieutenant,  or,  in  his 
absence,  the  lords  justices,  —  namely,  by  arrangement 
with  the  manager,  admission  to  the  boxes  was  free  to 
every  lady  disposed  to  honour  the  theatre  with  her 
presence ! 

Rowe  has  made  a  virtuous  hero  of  Tamerlane, 
without  at  all  causing  him  to  resemble  William  of 
Orange ;  but,  irrespective  of  this,  there  is  life  in  this 
tragedy,  which,  with  some  of  the  bluster  of  the  old, 
had  some  of  the  sentiment  of  the  new  school.  In 
1746,  when  the  Scottish  Rebellion  had  been  entirely 
suppressed,  it  was  acted  on  the  above  anniversaries 
with  much  attendant  enthusiasm,  Mrs.  Pritchard 
speaking  an  epilogue  written  for  the  occasion  by 
Horace  Walpole,  and  licensed  by  the  chamberlain, 
the  Duke  of  Grafton,  notwithstanding  a  compliment 
to  his  Grace,  which  Walpole  thought  might  induce 
the  duke,  out  of  sheer  modesty,  to  withhold  his  offi- 
cial sanction.  Tamerlane  has  been  a  favourite  part 
with  many  actors.  Lady  Morgan's  father,  Mr. 
Owenson,  made  his  first  appearance  in  it,  under 
Garrick's  rule ;  but  a  Tamerlane  with  a  strong  Irish 
brogue  and  comic  redundant  action  created  dififerent 
sensations  from  those  intended  by  the  author,  and 
though  the  audience  did  not  hiss,  they  laughed  abun- 
dantly. 

To  "Tamerlane"  succeeded  "Antiochus  the 
Great,"  a  tragedy  full  of  the  old  love,  bombast,  and 
murder.  The  Author  was  a  Mrs.  Jane  Wiseman,  who 
was  a  servant  in  the  family  of  Mr.  Wright,  of  Ox- 


263  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

ford,  where,  having  filled  her  mind  with  plays  and 
romances,  she  wrote  this  hyper-romantic  play,  and 
having  married  a  well-to-do  Westminster  vintner, 
named  Holt,  she  succeeded  in  seeing  it  fail,  as  it 
well  deserved  to  do. 

It  seemed  as  if  the  king-killing  in  the  plebeian 
lady's  tragedy  required  some  counteraction,  and  ac- 
cordingly. Lord  Orrery's  posthumous  play  of  "  Alte- 
mira"  was  next  brought  forward.  There  is  a  true 
king  and  also  a  usurper  in  this  roaring  yet  senti- 
mental tragedy,  in  whom  Whigs  and  Tories  might 
recognise  the  sovereigns  whom  they  respectively 
adored.  One  monarch  himself  complacently  re- 
marks : 

"  Whatever  crimes  are  acted  for  a  crown, 
The  gods  forgive,  when  once  that  crown's  put  on." 

To  touch  the  Lord's  anointed  is  an  unpardonable 
sin ;  but  if  the  Whigs  were  rendered  uneasy  by  this 
sentiment,  they  probably  found  comfort  in  the  speech 
wherein  Cleriraont  (Betterton),  while  owning  respect 
for  the  deprived  monarch,  confesses  the  fitness  of 
being  loyal  to  the  one  who  displaced  him. 

To  these  three  tragedies  succeeded  three  now  for- 
gotten comedies  :  "  The  Gentleman  Cully,"  in  which 
Booth  fooled  it  to  the  top  of  his  bent,  in  the  only 
English  comedy  which  ends  without  a  marriage; 
the  "  Beaux'  Duel,"  and  the  "  Stolen  Heiress,"  two 
of  Mrs.  Carroll's  (she  had  not  yet  become  Mrs.  Cent- 
livre)  bolder  plagiarisms  from  old  dramatists,  brought 
the  Lincoln's  Inn  season  to  a  close. 

In  the  season  of  1703  Drury  Lane  produced  seven, 
and  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields  six,  pieces.     The  first,  at 


A  SEVEN  YEARS'  RIVALRY  263 

Drury,  was  Baker's  "Tunbridge  Walks,"  the  man- 
ners of  which  smack  of  the  old  loose  times.  Then 
came  Durfey's  "  Old  Mode  and  the  New,"  a  long, 
dull,  satirical  comedy,  on  the  fashions  of  Elizabeth's 
days  and  those  of  Anne.  Durfey  was  then  at  his 
twenty-eighth  comedy,  and  in  the  decline  of  his 
powers.  Little  flourished  about  him  save  that  ter- 
rific beak  which  served  for  a  nose,  and  also  for  an 
excuse  for  his  dislike  to  have  his  likeness  taken.  In 
other  respects,  the  wit,  on  whose  shoulder  Charles 
had  leaned,  to  whose  songs  William  had  listened,  and 
at  them  Anne  even  then  laughed,  was  in  vogue,  but 
not  with  the  theatrical  pubUc. 

A  new  author  had  tempted  that  public,  in  April, 
with  a  comedy,  entitled  "  Fair  Example,  or  the  Mod- 
ish Citizens,"  by  Estcourt,  a  strolling  player,  but 
soon  afterward  a  clever  actor  in  this  company,  a  man 
whom  Addison  praised,  and  a  good  fellow,  whom 
Steele  admired.  His  career  had,  hitherto,  been  a 
strange  one.  He  ran  away  from  a  respectable  home 
in  Tewkesbury,  when  fifteen,  to  play  Roxalana  with 
some  itinerants,  and  fled  from  the  company,  on  being 
pursued  thither  by  his  friends,  in  the  dress  lent  him 
by  a  kind-hearted  girl  of  the  troupe.  In  this  dress, 
Estcourt  made  his  way  on  foot  to  Chipping  Norton, 
at  the  inn  of  which  place  the  weary  supposed  damsel 
was  invited  to  share  the  room  of  the  landlord's  daugh- 
ter. Then  ensued  a  scene  as  comic  as  any  ever 
invented  by  dramatist,  but  from  which  the  parties 
came  off  with  some  perplexity,  and  no  loss  of  honour. 
The  young  runaway  was  caught  and  sent  home,  and 
thence  he  was  despatched  to  Hatton  Garden,  and 
bound  by  articles  to  learn  there   the   apothecary's 


a64  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

mystery.  It  is  not  known  when  he  broke  from  these 
bonds ;  but  it  is  certain  that  he  again  —  some  say 
after  he  had  himself  failed  in  the  practice  of  the  mys- 
tery he  had  painfully  learned  —  took  to  the  joys  and 
sorrows,  trials,  triumphs,  and  temptations  of  a  wan- 
dering player's  Ufe  till  1698,  or  about  that  period, 
when  he  appeared  in  Dublin,  with  success.  He  was 
between  thirty  and  forty  years  of  age  when  he  came 
to  London  with  the  "  Fair  Example,"  an  adaptation, 
like  the  "  Confederacy,"  of  Dancour's  "  Modish  Citi- 
zens," but  not  destined  to  an  equal  success,  despite 
the  acting  of  Cibber  and  Norris,  and  that  brilliant 
triad  of  ladies,  Verbruggen,  Oldfield,  and  Powell. 
In  June,  Mrs.  Carroll  served  up  Moli^re's  "  M^decin 
raalgr6  Lui,"  in  the  cold  dish  called  "  Love's  Contri- 
vance ; "  and,  in  the  same  month,  Wilkinson  and  his 
sole  comedy,  "Vice  Reclaimed,"  appeared;  and  are 
now  forgotten. 

Next,  Manning  tried  the  judgment  of  the  town 
with  his  "All  for  the  Better,"  a  comedy,  of  triple 
plots,  —  stolen  from  old  writers.  Manning  resembled 
Steele  only  in  leaving  the  university  without  a  degree. 
If  Steele  obtained  a  government  appointment  after 
his  dramatic  success,  Manning  acquired  a  better 
after  his  failure.  He  was,  first,  secretary  to  our 
Legation  in  Switzerland ;  and,  secondly,  envoy  to 
the  Cantons ;  and  was  about  as  respectable  in  diplo- 
macy as  in  the  drama. 

Gildon's  play  of  the  "  Patriot,  or  the  Italian  Con- 
spiracy," the  last  produced  this  year,  with  Mills  as 
Cosmo  de  Medici,  and  Wilks  as  his  son  Julio,  merits 
notice  only  as  an  instance  of  the  mania  for  recon- 
structing accepted  stories.     Gildon,  toward  the  close 


A  SEVEN  YEARS'  RIVALRY  265 

of  his  wayward  and  silly  career,  transmuted  Lee's 
ancient  Roman  '♦  Lucius  Junius  Brutus "  into  the 
modem  Italian  "Patriot."  The  public  consigned  it 
to  oblivion. 

During  this  season,  when  "  Macbeth"  was  the  only 
one  of  Shakespeare's  plays  performed,  the  theatre  in 
Dorset  Gardens  was  prepared  for  opera ;  and  in  the 
summer  the  company  followed  Queen  Anne  to  Bath, 
by  command  ;  but  there  went  not  with  them  the  most 
brilliant  actress  of  light  comedy  that  the  two  centuries 
had  hitherto  seen,  Mrs.  Verbruggen,  that  sparkling 
Mrs.  Mountfort  whose  father,  Mr.  Perceval,  was  con- 
demned to  death  for  treason  against  King  William, 
on  the  day  her  husband  was  murdered  by  Lord 
Mohun !  The  Jacobite  father  was,  however,  par- 
doned. Mrs.  Mountfort,  or  Verbruggen,  left  a  suc- 
cessor equal,  perhaps  superior,  to  herself,  in  Mrs. 
Oldfield. 

The  season  of  1703,  at  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  was 
distinguished  by  the  success  of  Rowe's  "  Fair  Peni- 
tent," —  the  one  great  triumph  of  the  year.  The 
other  novelties  require  only  to  be  recorded.  That 
most  virulent  and  unscrupulous  of  Whig  partisan 
writers,  Oldmixon,  opened  the  season  with  his  third 
and  last  dramatic  essay,  the  «  Governor  of  Cyprus," 
supported  by  Betterton,  Booth,  Powell,  and  Mrs. 
Barry.  Oldmixon  was  a  poor  dramatist,  but  he 
made  a  tolerable  excise  officer,  —  a  post  which  he 
acquired  by  his  party  writings.  He  would  not,  how- 
ever, be  remembered  now,  but  for  the  preeminence 
for  dirt  and  dulness  which  Pope  has  awarded  him  in 
the  "  Dunciad."  The  entire  strength  of  the  company, 
Betterton   excepted,  was  wasted  on  the  comedies. 


266  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

"Different  Widows,"  by  a  judicious,  anonymous 
author;  "Love  Betrayed,"  Burnaby's  last  of  a  poor 
four,  and  that  a  marring  of  Shakespeare's  "  Twelfth 
Night ; "  and  "  As  You  Find  It "  (for  Mrs.  Porter's 
benefit,  in  April).  This  was  the  only  play  written 
by  Charles  Boyle,  grandson  of  the  dramatist  Earl  of 
Orrery,  to  which  title  he  succeeded,  four  months 
after  his  comedy  (the  dullest  in  the  English  language) 
had  failed.  Boyle  may  have  been  a  worthy  antago- 
nist of  Bentley,  touching  the  genuineness  of  the 
"Epistles  of  Phalaris,"  but  he  could  not  vie  with 
such  writers  of  comedy  as  Gibber,  Farquhar,  and 
Steele.  The  production  of  the  "Fickle  Shepherd- 
ess "  —  a  ruthless  handling  of  Randolph's  fine  pas- 
toral, "Amyntas"  —  pleased  but  for  a  few  nights, 
though  every  woman  of  note  in  the  company,  and  all 
beautiful,  played  in  it,  making  love  to,  or  prettily 
sighing  at,  or  as  prettily  sulking  with,  each  other. 
The  great  event  of  the  season  was,  undoubtedly,  the 
"  Fair  Penitent : "  Lothario,  Powell ;  Horatio,  Better- 
ton  ;  Altamont,  Verbruggen ;  Calista,  Mrs.  Barry ; 
Lavinia,  Mrs,  Bracegirdle. 

Rowe  had,  in  his  "  Tamerlane,"  thundered,  after  the 
manner  of  Dryden ;  had  tried  to  be  as  pathetic  as 
Otway,  and  had  employed  some  of  the  bombast  of 
Lee.  But  he  lacked  strength  to  make  either  of  the 
heroes  of  that  resonant  tragedy  vigorous.  In  devot- 
ing himself,  henceforth,  to  illustrate  the  woes  and 
weaknesses  of  heroines,  he  discovered  where  his  real 
powers  lay ;  and  Calista  is  one  of  the  most  successful 
of  his  portraitures.  There  is  gross  and  unavowed 
plagiarism  from  Massinger's  "  Fatal  Dowry,"  but 
there  is  a  greater  purity  of  sentiment  in  Rowe,  who 


A  SEVEN  YEARS'  RIVALRY  267 

leaves,  however,  mmch  room  for  improvement,  in 
that  respect,  by  his  successors.  Richardson  saw  this, 
when  he  made  of  his  Lovelace  a  somewhat  purified 
Lothario.  Rowe,  however,  notwithstanding  the  weak 
point  in  his  Fair  Penitent,  who  is  more  angry  at  being 
found  out,  than  sorry  for  what  has  happened,  has 
been  eminently  successful  ;  for  all  the  sympathy  of 
the  audience  is  freely  rendered  to  Calista.  The 
tragedy  may  still  be  called  an  acting  play,  though  it 
has  lost  something  of  the  popularity  it  retained  dur- 
ing the  last  century,  when  even  Edward,  Duke  of 
York,  and  Lady  Stanhope,  enacted  Lothario  and 
Calista,  in  the  once  famous  "private  theatre"  in 
Downing  Street.  Johnson's  criticism  is  all  praise, 
as  regards  both  fable  and  treatment.  The  style  is 
purely  English,  as  might  be  expected  of  a  writer  who 
said  of  Dryden,  that  — 

"  Backed  by  his  friends,  th'  invader  brought  along 
A  crew  of  foreign  words  into  our  tongue, 
To  ruin  and  enslave  our  free-born  English  song. 
Still,  ihe  prevailing  faction  propped  his  throne. 
And  to  four  volumes  let  his  plays  run  on." 

Shakespeare,  in  name,  at  least,  reappears  more 
frequently  on  the  stage  during  the  Druiy  Lane 
season  of  1702-04,  when  "Hamlet,"  "King  Lear," 
"  Macbeth,"  "  Timon  of  Athens,"  "  Richard  III.," 
the  "Tempest,"  and  "Titus  Andronicus,"  were  per- 
formed. These,  however,  were  the  "improved" 
editions  of  the  poet.  The  novelties  were,  the  "  Ly- 
ing Lover,"  by  Steele;  "Love,  the  Leveller;"  and 
the  "Albion  Queens."  It  was  the  season  in  which 
great  Anne  fruitlessly  forbade  the  presence  of  vizard- 


268  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

masks  in  the  pit,  and  of  gallants  on  the  stage  ;  recom- 
mended cleanliness  of  speech,  and  denounced  the 
shabby  people  who  occasionally  tried  to  evade  the 
money-takers.  Steele,  in  his  play,  attempted  to 
support  one  of  the  good  objects  which  the  queen  had 
in  view  ;  but  in  striving  to  be  pure  after  his  idea  of 
purity,  and  to  be  moral,  after  a  loose  idea  of  morality, 
he  failed  altogether  in  wit,  humour,  and  invention. 
He  thought  to  prove  himself  a  good  churchman,  he 
said,  even  in  so  small  a  matter  as  comedy ;  and  in 
his  character  of  comic  poet,  "  I  have  been,"  he  says, 
*'  a  martyr  and  confessor  for  the  Church,  for  this  play 
was  damned  for  its  piety."  This  is  as  broad  an  un- 
truth as  anything  uttered  by  the  Lying  Lover 
himself,  who,  when  he  does  express  a  mawkish  sen- 
timent after  he  has  killed  a  man  in  his  liquor,  can 
only  be  held  to  be  "a  liar"  as  before.  Steele  was 
condemned  for  stupidity  in  a  piece,  the  only  ray 
of  humour  in  which  pierces  through  the  dirty,  noisy, 
drunken  throngs  of  gallows-birds  in  Newgate.  That 
Steele  seriously  intended  his  play  to  be  the  begin- 
ning of  an  era  of  "  new  comedy,"  is,  however,  cer- 
tain.    In  the  prologue,  it  was  said  of  the  author : 

"  He  aims  to  make  the  coming  action  move 
On  the  tried  laws  of  friendship  and  of  love. 
He  offers  no  gross  vices  to  your  sight, — 
Those  too  much  horror  raise,  for  just  delight." 

Steele's  comedy  was  a  step  in  a  right  direction  ; 
and  his  great  fault  was  pretending  to  be  half  ashamed 
of  having  made  it.  That  it  had  a  "  clear  stage  and 
no  favour,"  is  literally  true.  It  was  one  of  the  first 
pieces  played  without  a  mingling  of  the  public  with 


A  SEVEN  YEARS'  RIVALRY  269 

the  players,  —  an  evil  fashion  which  was  not  entirely 
suppressed  for  threescore  years  after  Queen  Anne's 
decree,  when  Garrick  proved  more  absolute  than  her 
Majesty.  It  was  a  practice  which  so  annoyed  Baron, 
that  proudest  of  French  actors,  that  to  suggest  to 
the  audience  in  the  house  the  absurdity  of  it,  he 
would  turn  his  back  on  them  for  a  whole  act,  and 
play  to  the  audience  on  the  stage.  Sometimes  the 
noise  was  so  loud,  that  an  actor's  voice  could  be 
scarcely  heard.  "  You  speak  too  low  !  "  cried  a  pit- 
critic  to  Defresne.  "  And  you  too  high  !  "  retorted 
the  actor.  The  offended  pit  screamed  its  indignation, 
and  demanded  an  abject  apology.  "Gentlemen," 
said  Defresne,  "  I  never  felt  the  degradation  of  my 
position  till  now ; "  and  the  pit  interrupted  the 
bold  exordium  by  robnds  of  applause,  under  which 
he  resumed  his  part. 

Of  the  other  pieces  produced  this  season  at  Drury 
Lane,  it  will  suffice  to  say,  that  "  Love,  the  Leveller," 
was  by  "G.  B.,  gent.,"  who  describes  its  failure  to 
his  having  adopted  the  counsel  of  friends,  and  who 
consoles  himself  by  the  thought,  that  "  it  found  so 
favourable  a  reception  that  the  best  plays  hardly  ever 
meet  with  a  fuller  audience."  Happy  man  !  his  piece 
was  at  least  damned  by  a  full  house.  The  "Albion 
Queens  "  was  an  old  play  by  Banks,  which,  dealing 
with  the  affairs  of  England  and  Scotland,  was  held 
to  be  politically  dangerous ;  but  good  Queen  Anne 
now  licensed  it,  on  the  report  of  its  inoffensiveness 
made  by  "  a  nobleman  ; "  and  its  dulness,  relieved 
by  good  acting, .  delighted  our  easy  forefathers  for 
half  a  century. 

Lincoln's  Inn  failed  to  distinguish  itself  this  sea- 


270  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

son.  Eton  had  no  reason  to  be  proud  of  the  comedy 
of  its  alumnus,  Walker,  «'  Marry  or  Do  Worse  ; "  and 
in  the  tragedy  of  "Abra  Mule,"  with  its  similes, 
which  continually  run  away  with  their  rider,  the 
young  Master  of  Arts,  Trapp,  shows  that  he  was  as 
poor  a  poet,  in  his  early  days,  as  that  translation  of 
Virgil,  which  so  broke  the  rest  of  Mrs.  Trapp,  proved 
him  to  be  in  his  later  years,  when  he  was  D.  D.,  and 
professor  of  poetry.  Dennis's  "  Liberty  Asserted  " 
only  demonstrated  how  heartily  he  hated  the  French  ; 
and  as  there  was  no  dramatist  who  did  so,  in  the 
same  degree,  when  the  French  and  the  Pretender 
were  very  obnoxious,  some  years  later,  this  thunder  of 
Dennis  was  revived  to  stimulate  antipathies.  Queen 
Anne's  Scottish  historiographer  did  nothing  for  the 
English  stage,  by  his  comedy  of  "  Love  at  First 
Sight,"  and  farces  like  the  "  Stage  Coach,"  the 
"  Wits  of  Woman,"  and  "  Squire  Trelooby,"  are  only 
remarkable  because  Betterton  and  the  leading  actors 
played  in  them  as  readily  as  in  *'  first  pieces." 

During  May  Fair  the  theatre  was  closed,  some  of 
the  actors  playing  there  at  Pinketh man's  booth.  In 
the  same  season  they  played  before  the  queen  at  St. 
James's  in  the  "  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor,"  with 
Betterton  as  Falstaff,  which  he  subsequently  acted 
for  his  own  benefit.  This  piece,  and  also  "Julius 
Caesar,"  "Othello,"  and  "Timon  of  Athens,"  were 
the  plays  by,  or  from  Shakespeare,  which  were  played 
this  season. 

The  season  of  1704-05,  at  Drury  Lane,  now  pros- 
pering, to  the  considerable  vexation  of  Kit  Rich, 
chief  proprietor,  who  felt  himself  unable  to  avoid 
paying  his  company  their  salaries,  is  notable  for  the 


A  SEVEN  YEARS'  RIVALRY  271 

production  of  Gibber's  "  Careless  Husband.**  He 
who  now  reads  it  for  the  first  time  may  be  surprised 
to  hear  that  in  this  comedy  a  really  serious  and 
eminently  successful  attempt  to  reform  the  licentious- 
ness of  the  drama  was  made  by  one  who  had  been 
himself  a  great  offender.  Nevertheless,  the  fact 
remains.  In  Lord  Morelove  we  have  the  first  lover 
in  English  comedy,  since  licentiousness  possessed  it, 
who  is  at  once  a  gentleman  and  an  honest  man.  In 
Lady  Easy,  we  have,  what  was  hitherto  unknown  or 
laughed  at,  —  a  virtuous  married  woman.  It  is  a  con- 
versational piece,  not  one  of  much  action.  The  dia- 
logue is  admirably  sustained,  not  only  in  repartee, 
but  in  descriptive  parts.  There  is  some  refinement 
manifested  in  treating  and  talking  of  things  unrefined, 
and  incidents  are  pictured  with  a  master's  art.  Gib- 
ber's greatest  claim  to  respect  seems  to  me  to  rest 
on  this  elegant  and  elaborate,  though  far  from  fault- 
less comedy.  So  carefully  did  he  construct  the 
character  of  the  beautiful  and  brilliant  coquette,  Lady 
Betty  Modish,  whose  waywardness  and  selfishness 
are  finally  subdued  by  a  worthy  lover,  that  he  de- 
spaired finding  an  actress  with  power  enough  to 
realise  his  conception.  It  was  written  for  Mrs. 
Verbruggen  (Mountfort),  but  she  was  now  dead ; 
Mrs.  Bracegirdle  might  have  played  it,  but  "  Bracey  " 
was  not  a  member  of  the  Drury  Lane  company. 
There  was,  indeed,  Mrs.  Oldfield,  but  Colley  could 
scarcely  see  more  in  her  than  an  actress  of  promise. 
Reluctantly,  however,  he  entrusted  the  part  to  her, 
foreboding  discomfort ;  but  there  ensued  a  triumph 
for  the  actress  and  the  play,  for  which  Golley  was 
admiringly  grateful  to  the  end  of  his  life.     To  her, 


9fa  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

he  confessed,  was  chiefly  owing  the  success,  though 
every  character  was  adequately  cast.  He  eulogised 
her  excellence  of  action,  and  her  "personal  manner 
of  conversing."  He  adds,  "There  are  many  senti- 
ments in  the  character  of  Lady  Betty  Modish  that  I 
may  almost  say  were  originally  her  own,  or  only 
dressed  with  a  little  more  care  than  when  they  neg- 
ligently fell  from  her  lively  humour ;  had  her  birth 
placed  her  in  a  higher  rank  of  life,  she  had  certainly 
appeared  in  reality  what  in  this  play  she  only  excel- 
lently acted,  an  agreeably  gay  woman  of  quality,  a 
little  too  conscious  of  her  natural  attractions." 

Neither  Gibber's  friends  nor  foes  seem  to  have  at 
all  enjoyed  his  success.  They  would  not  compromise 
their  own  reputation  by  questioning  the  merit  of  this 
rare  piece  of  dramatic  excellence,  but  they  insinuated 
or  asserted  that  he  was  not  the  author.  It  was  writ- 
ten by  Defoe,  by  the  Duke  of  Argyll,  by  Mrs.  Old- 
field's  particular  friend,  Maynwaring!  Congreve, 
who  had  revelled  in  impurity,  and  stoutly  asserted 
his  cleanliness,  ungenerously  declared,  "Gibber  has 
produced  a  play  consisting  of  fine  gentlemen  and 
fine  conversation,  all  together,  which  the  ridiculous 
town,  for  the  most  part,  Ukes."  Gongreve  had  not 
then  forgiven  the  ridiculous  world  for  receiving  so 
coldly  his  own  last  comedy,  the  "  Way  of  the  World." 
Doctor  Armstrong  has  more  honestly  analysed  the 
play,  and  pointed  out  its  defects,  without  noticing  its 
merits ;  but  Walpole,  no  bad  judge  of  a  comedy  of 
such  character,  has  enthusiastically  declared  that  it 
"  deserves  to  be  immortal."  It  has  failed  in  that 
respect,  because  its  theme,  manners,  follies,  and 
?dlusions  are  obsolete,  to  say  nothing  of  a  company 


A  SEVEN  YEARS'  RIVALRY  273 

to  follow  even  decently  the  original  cast,  which  in- 
cluded Sir  Charles  Easy,  Wilks ;  Lord  Foppington, 
Gibber  ;  and  Lady  Betty  Modish,  Mrs.  Oldfield. 

Steele's  "Tender  Husband,  or  the  Accomplished 
Fools,"  in  which  he  had  Addison  for  a  coadjutor,  was 
produced  in  April,  1704.  Addison's  share  therein 
was  not  avowed  till  long  subsequently,  but  it  was 
handsomely  acknowledged,  at  last,  by  Steele,  in  the 
Spectator.  In  the  concluding  paper  of  the  seventh 
volume,  Steele  alluded  to  certain  scenes  which  had 
been  most  applauded.  These,  he  said,  were  by  Addi- 
son ;  and  honest  Dick  added,  that  he  had  ever  since 
thought  meanly  of  himself  in  not  having  publicly 
avowed  the  fact.  This  comedy  was  chiefly  a  satire 
on  the  evils  of  romance  reading,  and  was  of  a  strictly 
moral,  yet  decidedly  heavy  tendency ;  but  with  a 
Biddy  Tipkin  (Mrs.  Oldfield),  to  which  there  has 
been,  as  to  L^dy  Betty  Modish,  no  efficient  successor. 
There  was  a  good  end  in  both  these  plays.  The 
other  novelties,  "Arsinoe,  Queen  of  Cyprus,"  an 
opera;  "Gibraltar,  or  the  Spanish  Adventurer,"  a 
failure  of  Dennis's ;  "  Farewell  Folly,"  by  Motteux ; 
and  the  "  Quacks,"  by  Swiney  —  oblivion  wraps  them 
all. 

In  this  season  Dick  Estcourt  made  his  first  appear- 
ance in  London  as  Dominic,  in  the  "  Spanish  Friar." 
Of  Shakespeare's  plays,  "Hamlet,"  "Henry  IV.," 
and  "  Macbeth,"  were  frequently  repeated  during  the 
season. 

"Arsinoe,"  which  I  have  mentioned  above,  merits 
a  special  word  in  passing,  as  being  the  first  attempt 
to  establish  opera  in  England,  after  the  fashion  of 
that  of  Italy.     "  If  this  attempt,"  says  Clayton,  the 


274  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

composer,  who  understood  English  no  better  than  he 
did  music,  "  shall  be  the  means  of  bringing  this  man- 
ner of  music  to  be  used  in  my  native  country,  I  shall 
think  my  study  and  pains  very  well  employed."  The 
principal  singer  was  Mrs.  Tofts,  who  for  two  years 
had  been  singing,  after  the  play,  at  Lincoln's  Inn 
Fields,  against  Marguerite  de  I'Epine,  the  pupil  of 
Greber,  and  subsequently  the  ill-favoured  but  happy 
wife  of  Doctor  Pepusch,  who  fondly  called  her  Hecate 
—  she  answering  good-humouredly  to  the  name.  The 
Earl  of  Nottingham  (son  of  Lord  Chancellor  Finch), 
and  the  Duke  of  Bedford,  who  lost  by  dice  more 
than  his  father  made  by  the  "  Bedford  Level,"  patron- 
ised and  went  into  ecstasy  at  the  song  and  shake  of 
"the  Italian  lady,"  as  Marguerite  was  called.  The 
proud  Duke  of  Somerset,  who  was  as  mean  as  he  was 
proud,  and,  according  to  Lord  Cowper,  as  cowardly 
as  he  was  arrogant,  supported  native  talent,  in  Mrs. 
Tofts ;  as  did  also  that  Duke  of  Devonshire,  whom 
Evelyn  wonderingly  saw  lose,  with  calmness,  at  New- 
market, jCi,6oo,  and  who  was  afterward  the  munifi- 
cent lover,  and  heart -stricken  mourner,  of  another 
beautiful  vocalist.  Miss  Campion.  Mrs.  Tofts  had 
another  supporter  in  her  too  zealous  servant,  Anne 
Barwick,  who  one  night  went  to  Drury  Lane,  and 
assailed  Marguerite  with  hisses  and  oranges,  to  the 
g^eat  disgust  of  her  honest  mistress.  In  such  dis- 
cord did  opera  commence  among  us.  "Arsinoe," 
however,  had  a  certain  success,  toward  which  the 
composer,  Clayton,  contributed  little ;  and  he  was 
destined  to  do  less  subsequently. 

The  season  of  the  rival   company  was  passed  in 
two  houses  :  at  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  from  October 


A  SEVEN  YEARS'  RIVALRY  275 

till  the  April  of  1705,  when  the  company  with  the 
"four  capital  B's,"  Betterton,  Booth,  Mrs,  Barry,  and 
Mrs.  Bracegirdle,  removed  to  the  house  in  the  Hay- 
market,  built  for  them  by  Vanbrugh,  under  a  sub- 
scription filled  by  thirty  persons  of  quality,  at  ;^  100 
each,  for  which  they  received  free  admissions  for  life. 
Under  his  license  at  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  Betterton 
produced  nothing  of  note  this  season  but  Rowe's 
"Biters,"  a  satirical  comedy,  which  failed.  At  the 
end  of  the  season  he  consigned  his  license  to  Van- 
brugh, under  whom  he  engaged  as  leading  tragedian. 
Vanbrugh  opened  on  the  9th  of  April,  with  an  opera, 
the  "Triumph  of  Love."  It  failed,  as  did  old  plays 
inadequately  filled,  and  new  pieces,  by  Mrs.  Pix, 
Swiney,  and  one  or  two  other  obscure  writers,  in- 
cluding Chaves,  author  of  a  condemned  comedy,  the 
"  Cares  of  Love."  Baker  describes  Chaves  as  a  per- 
son of  no  consideration,  on  the  ground  that  he  dedi- 
cated his  play  to  "  Sir  William  Read,  the  mounte- 
bank," who,  I  think,  could  very  well  afford  to  pay 
the  usual  fee.  With  these  poor  aids,  and  many  mis- 
chances, the  first  season  at  the  Queen's  Theatre,  on 
the  site  of  our  present  Opera  House,  came  to  an 
unsatisfactory  conclusion. 

The  season  of  1705-06,  at  Drury  Lane,  with  a  few 
nights  at  Dorset  Gardens,  would  have  been  equally 
unsatisfactory,  but  for  one  great  success  to  balance 
the  failures  of  repatching  of  old  pieces,  worthless  new 
comedies,  and  the  fruitless  struggle  of  fashionable 
patrons  to  sustain  Gibber's  tragedy,  "Perolla  and 
Izadora."  The  great  success  was  Farquhar's  "Re- 
cruiting Officer,"  played  on  the  8th  April,  1706, 
with    this    cast :     Plume,    Wilks ;    Brazen,    Gibber ; 


276  tHEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

Kite,  Estcourt ;  Bullock,  Bullock ;  Balance,  Keene ; 
Worthy,  Williams ;  Costar  Pearmain,  Norris  ;  Apple- 
tree,  Fairbank  ;  Sylvia,  Mrs.  Oldfield  ;  Melinda,  Mrs. 
Rogers ;  Rose,  Mrs.  Susan  Mountfort ;  Lucy,  Mrs. 
Sapsford. 

This  lively  comedy  was  so  successful  that  Tonson, 
in  a  fit  of  liberality,  gave  the  author  ;£i5,  and  a 
supplementary  half-crown  for  the  copyright.  The 
money  was  welcome  ;  for,  between  having  married, 
or  rather  being  married  by,  a  woman  who  pretended 
she  had  a  large  fortune,  when  she  really  had  only  a 
large  amount  of  love  for  Farquhar,  who  was  more 
attracted  by  the  pretence  than  the  reality ;  between 
this,  his  commission  sold,  his  patrons  indifferent,  his 
family  cares  increasing,  and  his  health  declining, 
poor  George  was  in  sorry  need,  yet  buoyant  spirits. 
Critics  foretold  that  this  play  would  live  for  ever ; 
but  unfortunately  it  has  been  found  impossible  to 
separate  the  wit  and  the  lively  action  from  the  more 
objectionable  parts,  and  we  may  not  expect  to  see  its 
revival.  Farquhar  has  drawn  on  his  own  experiences 
in  the  construction,  and  all  the  amiable  people  in  the 
piece  were  transcripts  of  good  Shrewsbury  folk,  whose 
names  have  been  preserved.  Farquhar  immortalised 
the  virtues  of  his  hosts,  and  did  not,  like  Foote, 
watch  them  at  the  tables  at  which  he  was  a  guest,  to 
subsequently  expose  them  to  public  ridicule. 

"  Santlow,  famed  for  dance,"  first  bounded  on  to 
the  stage  during  this  season,  and  the  heart  of  Mr. 
Secretary  Craggs  bounded  in  unison.  Miss  Younger, 
too,  first  trod  the  boards,  March,  1706,  when  about 
seven  years  old,  as  the  Princess  Elizabeth,  in  "  Virtue 
Betrayed ; "  but  perhaps  the  most  notable  circura- 


A  SEVEN  YEARS'  RIVALRY  277 

stance  of  the  year  was,  that  the  chapel  in  Russell 
Court  was  then  building ;  but  it  was  under  difficulties, 
to  extricate  it  from  which  the  Drury  Lane  company 
played  "  Hamlet,"  and  handed  over  the  handsome 
proceeds  to  the  building  committee ! 

Vanbrugh's  two  comedies,  the  "  Confederacy  "  and 
the  «  Mistake  "  (the  latter  still  acted  under  the  title 
of  "Lovers'  Quarrels"),  Rowe's  "Ulysses,"  the 
"  Faithful  General,"  by  an  anonymous  young  lady, 
a  forgotten  tragedy,  the  "  Revolution  of  Sweden,"  by 
Mrs.  Trotter,  an  equally  forgotten  comedy,  "  Adven- 
tures in  Madrid,"  by  fat  Mrs.  Pix,  tragic,  comic,  and 
extravaganza  operas,  by  Lansdown,  Durfey,  and 
others,  —  all  this  novelty,  a  fair  company  of  actors, 
troops  of  dancers,  and  a  company  of  vocalists  with 
Dick  Leveredge  and  Mrs.  Tofts  at  the  head  of  them, 
failed  to  render  the  often  broken  but  prolonged  sea- 
son of  1705-06,  which  begun  in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields, 
and  terminated  at  the  house  in  the  Haymarket,  profit- 
able. 

In  many  respects  it  did  not  deserve  to  be,  for  Van- 
brugh,  with  more  wit  and  humour,  and  more  judg- 
ment in  adaptation  than  Ravenscroft,  sought  to  bring 
back  comedy  to  the  uncleanliness  in  which  the  latter 
writer  had  left  it.  There  came  a  cry,  however,  from 
the  outer  world,  against  this  condition  of  things. 
Lord  Gardenstone,  a  lord  of  seat,  I  believe,  and  not 
a  lord  of  state,  as  it  is  said  in  the  north,  indignantly 
remarked  of  the  "  Confederacy : "  "  This  is  one  of 
those  plays  which  throw  infamy  on  the  English  stage 
and  general  taste,  though  it  is  not  destitute  of  wit  and 
humour.  A  people  must  be  in  the  last  degree  de- 
praved, among  whom  such  public  entertainments  are 


a 78  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

produced  and  encouraged.  In  this  symptom  of  de- 
generate manners  we  are,  I  believe,  unmatched  by 
any  nation  that  is,  or  ever  was,  in  the  world."  In 
the  "Confederacy,"  Doggett's  fame  as  an  actor  cul- 
minated. He  dressed  Moneytrap  with  the  care  of  a 
true  artist.  On  an  old  threadbare  black  coat  he 
tacked  new  cuffs  and  collar  to  make  its  rustiness  more 
apparent.  Genest,  quoting  Wilks,  adds,  that  the 
neck  of  the  coat  was  stuffed  so  as  to  make  the  wearer 
appear  round-shouldered,  and  give  greater  prominency 
to  the  head.  Wearing  large,  square-toed  shoes  with 
huge  buckles  over  his  own  ordinary  pair,  made  his 
legs  appear  smaller  than  they  really  were.  Doggett, 
we  are  told,  could  paint  and  mould  his  face  to  any 
age.  Kneller  recognised  in  him  a  superior  artist. 
Sir  Godfrey  remarks  that,  "  he  could  only  copy  nature 
from  the  originals  before  him,  but  that  Doggett  could 
vary  them  at  pleasure,  and  yet  keep  a  close  likeness." 
It  must  be  confessed  the  public  were  more  pleased 
with  this  piece  than  with  Rowe's  "  Ulysses,"  in  which 
Penelope  gave  so  bright  an  example  of  conjugal  duty 
and  maternal  love,  in  the  person  of  Mrs.  Barry,  to 
the  Ulysses  of  Betterton,  and  the  Telemachus  of 
Booth.  That  public  would,  perhaps,  have  cared  more 
for  the  grace  and  nature  of  Addison's  "  Rosamond," 
produced  at  Drury  Lane,  in  March,  1707,  with  its 
exquisite  flattery  cunningly  administered  to  the  war- 
rior who  then  dwelt  near  Woodstock,  had  it  been  set 
by  a  less  incompetent  musician  than  William's  old 
band-master,  Clayton,  the  conceited  person  who  un- 
dertook to  improve  on  Italian  example,  and  who 
violated  the  accents  and  prosody  of  our  language,  as 
well  as  all  rules  of  musical  composition.     It  is  singu- 


A  SEVEN  YEARS'  RIVALRY  279 

lar,  however,  that  neither  Arne  nor  Arnold  have  been 
much  more  successful,  in  resetting  Addison's  opera, 
than  Clayton  himself.  The  piece  was  played  but 
three  times,  and  the  author's  witty  articles  against 
the  absurdities  of  Italian  opera  are  supposed,  by  some 
writers,  to  have  owed  their  satire  to  the  failure  of 
"Rosamond."  One  great  and  happy  success  Addi- 
son achieved  through  this  piece,  which  compensated 
for  any  disappointment  springing  from  it.  Poetical 
warrant  of  its  excellence  was  sent  to  him  from  many 
a  quarter  ;  but  the  brightest  wreath,  the  most  elegant, 
refined,  graceful,  and  the  most  welcome  of  all,  ema- 
nated from  his  own  university.  Addison,  charmed 
with  the  lines,  inquired  after  the  writer,  and  dis- 
covered him  in  an  undergraduate  of  Queen's  College, 
the  son  of  a  poor  Cumberland  clergyman,  and  named 
Thomas  Tickell.  It  was  a  happy  day  when  both 
met,  for  then  was  laid  the  foundation  of  a  long  and 
tender  friendship.  To  "  Rosamond "  and  his  own 
musical  lines  upon  it,  Tickell  owed  the  felicity  of  his 
life,  as  Addison's  friend  at  home,  his  secretary  in  his 
study,  his  associate  abroad,  his  assistant  and  substi- 
tute in  his  office  of  secretary  of  state,  and,  finally, 
less  happy  but  not  less  honourable,  the  executor  of 
his  patron's  will,  and  the  editor  of  his  patron's  works. 
"  Rosamond "  was  produced  during  one  of  the 
most  unlucky  seasons  at  Drury  Lane,  1706-07 ;  dur- 
ing which,  Swiney  parted  from  Rich,  took  the  Hay- 
market,  from  Vanbrugh,  at  a  rent  of  ^5  i  per  night, 
and  carried  with  him  some  of  the  best  actors  from 
Drury.  "The  deserted  company,"  as  they  called 
themselves,  advertised  the  "  Recruiting  Officer,"  for 
their  benefit,  "in  which  they  pray  there  may  be  sing- 


aSo  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

ing  by  Mrs.  Tofts,  in  English  and  Italian ;  and  some 
dancing."  The  mainstay  of  the  season  was  the 
"  Recruiting  Officer."  Estcourt  was  advertised  as 
"  The  True  Sergeant  Kite,"  against  Pack,  who  played 
it  at  the  Haymarket.  At  Drury,  where  Rich  de- 
pended chiefly  on  opera,  it  was  said  that  "  sound  had 
got  the  better  of  sense  ;  "  and  the  old  motto  "  Vivitur 
ingenio,"  was  no  longer  applicable.  It  is  at  the 
Haymarket,  says  the  dedication  of  "  Wit  without 
Money,"  to  Newman,  the  prompter,  that  "wit  is 
encouraged,  and  the  player  reaps  the  fruit  of  his 
labours,  without  toiling  for  those  who  have  always 
been  the  oppressors  of  the  stage." 

In  the  season  of  1 706-07,  at  the  Haymarket,  Mrs. 
Oldfield  and  Mrs.  Bracegirdle  first  played  together, 
—  the  younger  actress  ultimately  winning  or  van- 
quishing the  town.  Gibber,  too,  joined  the  company, 
at  the  head  of  whom  remained  Betterton  and  Mrs. 
Barry.  Every  effort  was  made  to  beat  opera  by  a 
production  of  pieces  of  a  romantic,  or  classical  cast ; 
and  Addison's  pen,  in  prologue  on  the  stage,  or  in 
praise  in  the  Spectator,  was  wielded  in  the  cause  of 
the  players,  his  neighbours. 

Mrs.  Centlivre  and  Mrs.  Manley  contributed  now- 
forgotten  plays.  The  former,  the  "  Platonic  Lady," 
in  which  there  is  the  unpleasant  incident  of  a  couple  of 
lovers,  who  ultimately  prove  to  be  brother  and  sister. 
Mrs.  Manley,  in  *'  Almyna,"  recommended  what  she 
had  little  practised,  —  unlimited  exercise  of  heroic 
virtue.  Some  vamped-up  old  pieces,  with  new  names, 
were  added,  and  subscription  lists  were  opened,  to 
enable  the  company,  whose  interests  were  espoused 
by  Lord  Halifax,  to  make  head  against  opera.     The 


A  SEVEN  YEARS'  RIVALRY  281 

greatest  attempt  to  overcome  the  latter  was  made, 
by  producing  a  truly  and  drily  classical  tragedy,  by 
Edmund  Smith,  called  "  Phaedra  and  Hippolytus," 
which  the  public  would  not  endure  above  three  nights, 
to  the  disgust  and  astonishment  of  Addison,  as  re- 
corded in  the  Spectator.  Smith,  or  Neale  rather,  — 
the  former  being  a  name  he  adopted  from  a  benevo- 
lent uncle,  —  was  not  the  man  to  give  new  lustre  to 
the  stage.  Scarcely  a  year  had  elapsed  since  he  had 
been  expelled  from  Oxford  University ;  the  brilliancy 
of  his  career  there  could  not  save  him  from  that  dis- 
grace. His  success  on  the  stage,  when  he  made  this 
his  sole  attempt,  was  perhaps  impeded  by  the  exac- 
tions of  actors  and  actresses  at  rehearsal,  to  suit 
whose  caprices  he  had  to  write  fresh  verses,  and  fur- 
nish them  with  ♦'  tags,"  whereby  to  secure  applause, 
as  they  made  their  exit.  The  play  fell,  and  the 
author  with  it.  The  once  brilliant  scholar  descended 
to  become  a  sot.  The  once  best-dressed  fop  of  his 
day  became  known  by  the  nickname  of  "Captain 
Rag ; "  and  as  neither  his  wild  life  nor  his  careless 
style  of  costume  seriously  affected  his  great  personal 
beauty,  the  women,  tempering  justice  with  clemency, 
called  him  the  Handsome  Sloven  !  This  scholar, 
poet,  critic,  and  drunkard,  attempted  to  recover  his 
reputation,  by  writing  a  tragedy,  on  the  subject  of 
Lady  Jane  Grey ;  but  he  died  in  the  attempt. 

A  greater  dramatist  than  he  died  this  season,  in  a 
blaze  of  triumph  from  the  stage,  under  the  dull  cloud 
of  poverty  at  home,  —  George  Farquhar.  His  joy- 
ous "Beaux'  Stratagem,"  first  played  on  the  8th  of 
March,  1 707,  was  written  in  six  painful  weeks.  Ton- 
son  gave  him  ^30  for  the  right  of  printing,  and  this, 


2S2  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

with  what  he  received  from  the  managers,  solaced 
the  last  weeks  of  the  life  of  the  ex-captain,  who  had 
sold  his  commission,  and  had  been  deluded  by  a 
patron  who  had  promised  to  obtain  preferment  for 
him.  Farquhar  had  lost  everything  but  sense  of 
pain  and  flow  of  spirits.  He  died  in  April,  1707, 
while  the  public  were  being  enchanted  by  his  comedy, 
—  so  rich  in  delineation  of  character  and  in  variety 
of  incident.  It  was  thus  cast :  Aimwell,  Mills ; 
Archer,  Wilks  ;  Scrub,  Norris  ;  Foigard,  Bowen  (then 
newly  come  from  Ireland) ;  Boniface,  Bullock  ;  Sul- 
len, Verbruggen  (his  last  original  character ;  the 
stage  was  thoughtful  of  his  orphan  children  as  it  was 
of  those  of  Farquhar) ;  Gibbet,  Gibber  ;  Gount  Bel- 
lair,  Bowman  ;  Sir  Gharles  Freeman,  Keene ;  Lady 
Bountiful,  Mrs.  Powell ;  Mrs.  Sullen,  Mrs.  Oldfield ; 
Gherry,  Mrs.  Bicknell ;  Dorinda,  Mrs.  Bradshaw. 
This  piece  was  the  great  glory  of  the  Haymarket 
season,  1706-07. 

The  season  of  1707-08  was  the  last  for  a  time  of 
the  two  opposing  houses,  and  it  requires  but  a  brief 
notice.  Powell  at  Drury  Lane  was  weak  as  leading 
tragedian  against  Betterton  at  the  Haymarket,  and 
Rich,  the  manager,  produced  no  new  piece.  At  the 
rival  house  the  novelties  were  Gibber's  adaptations 
of  two  or  three  forgotten  plays,  the  bricks  with  which 
he  built  up  his,  at  first  "hounded,"  but  ultimately 
successful,  '*  Double  Gallant,"  in  which  he  played 
Atall ;  the  same  author's  "  Lady's  Last  Stake,"  a 
heavy  comedy;  and  Rowe's  "Royal  Gonvert,"  a 
heavier  tragedy  of  the  times  of  Hengist  and  Horsa. 
In  this  play,  the  courtly  author  bade  for  the  bays 
(which  were  not  to  encircle  his  brows  till  the  acces- 


A  SEVEN  YEARS'  RIVALRY  283 

sion  of  George  I.),  by  introducing  a  complimentary 
prophecy  alluding  to  Queen  Anne  and  the  then 
much-canvassed  union  of  England  and  Scotland. 
This  was,  perhaps,  not  worse  than  the  references 
made  by  the  savage  Saxon  Rodogune  to  Venus,  and 
to  the  eagle  that  bore  Jove's  thunder !  There  are, 
nevertheless,  some  stately  scenes  in  this  play.  Of 
its  failure,  Rowe  did  not  complain;  he  simply,  on 
printing  it,  quoted  the  words,  '*  Laudatur  et  alget^' 
on  the  title-page.  Critics  have  thought  that  the 
story  was  of  too  religious  a  texture  to  please.  It 
was  too  obscure  to  excite  interest. 

At  the  end  of  this  season  the  two  companies  were 
ordered,  by  the  lord  chamberlain,  to  unite ;  and  they 
were  not  indisposed  to  obey.  The  patent  for  Drury 
Lane  was  then  held  by  Rich  and  Sir  Thomas  Skip- 
with,  who  had  formerly  held  a  larger  share.  The 
Monthly  Mirror,  for  March,  1708,  says  that  Rich's 
father  was  an  attorney,  to  one  of  whose  clients  Sir 
Thomas  owed  a  large  sum  of  money.  Being  unable 
to  pay  it,  he  put  up  a  part  of  his  theatrical  patent  to 
auction,  and  Rich  bought  the  share  for  £,^0 !  In 
Christopher  Rich's  time  a  quarter  share  was  sold  to 
Colman  for  ;^20,ooo.  Sir  Thomas  now  consigned 
what  share  he  held  to  Colonel  Brett,  —  a  man  more 
famous  as  the  husband  of  the  divorced  wife  of 
Charles  Gerard,  second  Earl  of  Macclesfield,  of  whom 
fiction  still  makes  the  mother  of  Savage,  the  poet, 
and  as  the  father  of  Anne  Brett,  George  I.'s  English 
mistress,  than  for  aught  else,  except  it  be  that  he 
was  the  friend  of  Colley  Cibber.  It  was  by  Colonel 
Brett's  influence  that  the  union  of  the  companies  was 
effected,  under   the  patent  held  by  him  and  Rich ; 


a84  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

and  henceforward  the  great  house  in  the  Haymarket 
was  given  up  to  Swiney  and  Italian  opera,  at  the  fol- 
lowing prices  for  admission,  which  will  be  found  to 
form  a  strong  contrast  with  those  at  present  ex- 
tracted from  the  British  pocket :  Stage-boxes,  los. 
6d. ;  boxes,  Ss. ;  pit,  5^. ;  lower  gallery,  2s.  6d. ; 
upper  gallery,  is.  6d. 

I  have  stated  above  that  the  union  of  the  com- 
panies was  the  result  of  an  order  from  the  lord 
chamberlain.  How  absolute  was  the  authority  of 
this  official  may  be  gathered  from  various  incidents 
on  record.  Gibber  cites  one  to  this  effect :  Powell, 
the  actor,  holding  controversy  on  theatrical  matters, 
at  Will's  Coffee-house,  was  so  excited  as  to  strike 
one  of  the  speakers  on  the  opposite  side.  Unluckily, 
this  speaker  was  a  kinsman  of  the  master  or  manager 
of  the  house  where  Powell  played,  and  he  rushed  to 
the  chamberlain's  office  to  obtain  redress,  that  is  ven- 
geance. In  the  absence  of  the  supreme  officer,  the 
vice-chamberlain  took  up  the  quarrel.  He  probably 
ordered  the  actor  to  offer  an  apology ;  and  he  cer- 
tainly shut  up  Drury  Lane  Theatre,  because  the 
manager,  who  had  received  no  communication  from 
him,  had  permitted  Powell  to  appear  before  such 
reparation  was  made.  The  embarrassed  company  of 
comedians  were  not  allowed  to  resume  their  calling 
for  two  or  three  days,  and  thus  serious  injury  was 
inflicted  on  such  actors  as  were  paid  only  on  the  days 
of  performance.  This  was  in  King  William's  reign, 
but  the  power  was  not  less,  nor  less  absolutely  exer- 
cised, in  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne ;  and  on  this  very 
occasion  which  led  to  the  chamberlain's  order  for  the 
union  of  the  companies.     Great  dissension  had  arisen 


A  SEVEN  YEARS'  RIVALRY  285 

at  Drury  Lane  by  a  new  arrangement  with  respect 
to  benefits,  whereby  the  patentees  took  a  third  of  the 
receipts.  The  more  discontented  went  over  to  the 
Haymarket ;  others  remained,  protested,  and  sought 
for  redress  at  the  legal  tribunal.  Gibber  will  best 
tell  what  followed : 

"  Several  little  disgraces  were  put  upon  them,  par- 
ticularly in  the  disposal  of  parts  in  plays  to  be 
revived ;  and  as  visible  a  partiality  was  shown  in  the 
promotion  of  those  in  their  interest,  though  their 
endeavours  to  serve  them  could  be  of  no  extraordi- 
nary use.  All  this  while  the  other  party  were  pas- 
sively silent,  till  one  day,  the  actor  who  particularly 
solicited  their  cause  at  the  lord  chamberlain's  office, 
being  shown  there  the  order  signed  for  absolutely 
silencing  the  patentees,  and  ready  to  be  served,  flew 
back  with  the  news  to  his  companions,  then  at  a 
rehearsal,  at  which  he  had  been  wanted ;  when  being 
called  to  his  part,  and  something  hastily  questioned 
by  the  patentee  for  his  neglect  of  business,  this  actor, 
I  say,  with  an  erected  look  and  a  theatrical  spirit,  at 
once  threw  off  the  mask,  and  roundly  told  him  :  *  Sir, 
I  have  now  no  more  business  here  than  you  have. 
In  half  an  hour  you  will  neither  have  actors  to  com- 
mand, nor  authority  to  employ  them.'  The  patentee 
who,  though  he  could  not  readily  comprehend  his 
mysterious  manner  of  speaking,  had  just  glimpse  of 
terror  enough  from  the  words  to  soften  his  reproof 
into  a  cold  formal  declaration,  that  '  if  he  would  not 
do  his  work  he  should  not  be  paid.'  But  now,  to 
complete  the  catastrophe  of  these  theatrical  commo- 
tions, enters  the  messenger,  with  the  order  of  silence 
in  his  hands,  whom  the  same  actor  officiously  intro- 


286  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

duced,  telling  the  patentee  that  the  gentleman  wanted 
to  speak  with  him,  from  the  lord  chamberlain.  When 
the  messenger  had  delivered  the  order,  the  actor, 
throwing  his  head  over  his  shoulder,  toward  the 
patentee,  in  the  manner  of  Shakespeare's  Harry 
VIII.  to  Cardinal  Wolsey,  cried :  '  Read  o'er  that ! 
and  then  to  breakfast,  with  what  appetite  you  may ! ' 
Though  these  words  might  be  spoken  in  too  vin- 
dictive and  insulting  a  manner  to  be  commended, 
yet,  from  the  fulness  of  a  heart  injuriously  treated, 
and  now  relieved  on  that  instant  occasion,  why  might 
they  not  be  pardoned  ?  The  authority  of  the  patent 
now  no  longer  subsisting,  all  the  confederated  actors 
immediately  walked  out  of  the  house,  to  which  they 
never  returned,  till  they  became  themselves  the  ten- 
ants and  masters  of  it." 

Let  me  note  here  that  in  May,  1708,  Vanbrugh 
wrote  to  Lord  Manchester  :  "  I  have  parted  with  my 
whole  concern  (the  Queen's  Theatre,  Hay  market)  to 
Mr.  Swiney,  only  reserving  my  rent,  so  he  is  entire 
possessor  of  the  opera,  and  most  people  think  will 
manage  it  better  than  anybody.  He  has  a  good  deal 
of  money  in  his  pocket,  that  he  got  before  by  the 
acting  company,  and  is  willing  to  venture  it  upon  the 
singers."  This  proves  that  the  lack  of  prosperity, 
which  marked  the  end  of  the  last  century,  did  not 
distinguish  the  beginning  of  the  new. 


CHAPTER    XIV. 

THE    UNITED    AND    THE    DISUNITED    COMPANIES 

The  names  of  Betterton,  Booth,  Wilks,  Gibber, 
Mills,  Powell,  Estcourt,  Pinkethman,  Jr.,  Keene, 
Norris,  Bullock,  Pack,  Johnson,  Bowen,  Thurmond, 
Bickerstaff;  of  Mistresses  Barry,  Bradshaw,  Old- 
field,  Powell,  Rogers,  Saunders,  Bicknell,  Knight, 
Porter,  Susan  Mountfort,  and  Cross,  —  indicate  the 
quality  of  a  company,  which  commenced  acting  at 
Drury  Lane,  and  which,  in  some  respects,  was  per- 
haps never  equalled ;  though  it  did  not  at  first  realise 
a  corresponding  success.  Betterton  only  "played" 
occasionally,  though  he  invariably  acted  well.  The 
new  pieces  produced,  failed  to  please.  The  young 
Kentish  attorney,  and  future  editor  of  Shakespeare, 
Theobald,  gave  the  first  of  about  a  score  of  for- 
gotten dramas  to  the  stage ;  but  his  "  Persian 
Princess  "  swept  it  but  once  or  twice  with  her  train. 
Tavernor,  the  proctor,  who  could  paint  landscapes 
almost  as  ably  as  Caspar  Poussin,  proved  but  a  poor 
dramatist ;  and  his  **  Maid  the  Mistress,"  was  barely 
listened  to. 

Matters  did  not  improve  in  1708-09,  in  which  sea- 
son Brett's  share  of  the  patent  was  made  over  to 
Wilks,  Cibber,  and  Estcourt,  —  the  other  shares 
amounting  to  nearly  a  dozen.     The  only  success  of 

287 


288  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

this  season  was  achieved  by  Mrs.  Centlivre's  "  Busy- 
body "  (Marplot,  by  Pack),  and  that  was  a  success  of 
slow  growth.  Baker,  who  had  ridiculed  his  own 
effeminate  ways  in  Maiden  ("Tunbridge  Walks"), 
satirised  the  women  ;  but  the  public  hissed  his  "  Fine 
Lady's  Airs,"  almost  as  much  as  they  did  Tom 
Durfey's  "  Prophets."  In  the  latter  piece,  rakish, 
careless,  penniless  Tom  laughed  at  the  religious  im- 
postors of  the  day  who  dealt  with  the  past  dead  and 
with  future  events;  but  the  public  did  not  see  the 
fun  of  it,  and  damned  the  play,  whose  author  survived 
to  write  worse.  Then  there  was  the  "Appius  and 
Virginia,"  of  Dennis, —  of  which  nothing  survives  but 
the  theatrical  thunder,  invented  by  the  author  for  this 
tragedy,  —  and  the  use  of  which,  after  the  public  had 
condemned  the  drama  of  a  man  who  equally  feared 
France  abroad  and  bailiffs  at  home,  was  always  re- 
sented by  him  as  a  plagiarism.  In  this  piece,  Better- 
ton  acted  the  last  of  his  long  list  of  the  dramatic 
characters  created  by  him,  —  Virginius.  Shortly 
after  this  took  place  that  famous  complimentary 
benefit  for  the  old  player,  when  the  pit  tickets  were 
paid  for  at  a  guinea  each.  The  actors  could  scarcely 
get  through  "Love  for  Love,"  in  which  he  played 
Valentine,  for  the  cloud  of  noble  patrons  clustered 
on  the  stage,  when  guineas  by  the  score  were  deli- 
cately pressed  upon  him  for  acceptance,  —  and  Mis- 
tresses Barry  and  Bracegirdle  supported  him  at  the 
close ;  while  the  former  spoke  the  epilogue,  which 
was  the  dramatic  apotheosis  of  Betterton  himself. 

On  the  following  June,  actors  and  patentees  were 
at  issue,  and  their  dissensions  were  not  quelled  by 
the  lord  chamberlain  closing  the  house ;  from  which 


THE  UNITED  AND  DISUNITED  COMPANIES       289 

Rich,  of  whose  oppressions  the  actors  complained, 
was  driven  by  Collier,  the  M.  P.  for  Truro,  to  whom, 
for  political  as  well  as  other  reasons,  a  license  was 
granted  to  open  Drury  Lane.  When  Collier  took 
forcible  possession  of  the  house,  he  found  that  Rich 
had  carried  off  most  of  the  scenery  and  costumes; 
but  he  made  the  best  of  adverse  circumstances  and  a 
company  lacking  Betterton  and  other  able  actors, 
and  he  opened  Drury  on  November  23d,  1709,  under 
the  direction  of  Aaron  Hill,  with  "  Aurungzebe," 
and  Booth  for  his  leading  tragedian. 

Booth  wished  to  appear  in  a  new  tragedy,  and  Hill 
wrote,  in  a  week,  that  "  Elfrid "  which  the  public 
damned  in  a  night.  Hill  was  always  ready  to  write. 
At  Westminster,  he  had  filled  his  pockets  by  writing 
the  exercises  of  young  gentlemen  who  had  not  wit 
for  the  work ;  and  by  and  by  he  will  be  writing  the 
"Bastard,"  for  Savage.  Meanwhile,  here  was  "El- 
frid," written  and  condemned.  The  author  allowed 
that  it  was  "an  unpruned  wilderness  of  fancy,  with 
here  and  there  a  flower  among  the  leaves,  but  without 
any  fruit  of  judgment."  At  this  time.  Hill  was  a 
young  fellow  of  four  and  twenty,  with  great  experi- 
ence and  some  reputation.  A  friendless  young 
"  Westminster,"  he  had  at  fifteen  found  his  way  alone 
to  Constantinople,  where  he  obtained  a  patron  in  the 
ambassador,  the  sixth  Lord  Paget,  —  a  distant  rela- 
tion of  the  youthful  Aaron.  Under  the  peer's  aus- 
pices. Hill  travelled  extensively  in  the  East;  and 
subsequently,  ere  he  was  yet  twenty,  accompanied  Sir 
William  Wentworth,  as  travelling  tutor,  over  most  of 
Europe.  Later,  his  poem  of  "  Camillus,"  in  defence 
of  Lord  Peterborough,  procured  for  him  the  post  of 


290  THEIR  MAJESTIES'   SERVANTS 

secretary  to  that  brave  and  eccentric  peer,  with  whom 
he  remained  till  his  marriage.  Then  Aaron  lived 
with  a  divided  allegiance  to  his  wife  and  the  stage, 
for  the  improvement  of  which  he  had  many  an  im- 
practicable theory.  He  would  willingly  have  written 
a  tragedy  for  Booth  once  a  week. 

Tragedies  not  being  in  request,  Hill  tried  farce, 
and  produced  his  "  Walking  Statue,"  a  screamer,  as 
improbable  as  his  "  Elfrid "  was  unpruned.  The 
audience  would  not  tolerate  it ;  and  Hill  came  before 
them  in  a  few  days  with  a  comedy,  "  Trick  upon 
Trick,"  at  which  the  house  howled  rather  than 
laughed.  Whereupon,  Hill  new-nibbed  his  pen,  and 
addressed  himself  to  composition  again. 

The  treasury  gained  more  by  the  appearance  of 
Elrington,  in  "  Oronooko,"  than  by  Hill's  novelties. 
Then,  the  trial  of  putting  the  fairy  dancer,  Santlow, 
into  boy's  clothes,  and  giving  her  the  small  part  of 
the  Eunuch  in  "  Valentinian  "  to  play,  and  an  epilogue 
to  be  spoken  in  male  attire,  succeeded  so  well,  that 
^e  was  cast  for  Dorcas  Zeal  in  Charles  Shadwell's 
*'  Fair  Quaker  of  Deal,"  wherein  she  took  the  town, 
and  won  the  heart  of  Booth.  In  this  character-piece 
Flip,  the  sea-brute,  is  contrasted  with  Beau  Mizen, 
the  sea-fop,  but  the  latter  is,  in  some  degree,  a  copy 
of  Baker's  Maiden,  the  progenitor  of  the  family  of 
Dundreary. 

From  Collier,  there  went  over  to  the  Haymarket, 
under  Swiney,  Betterton,  Wilks,  Cibber,  Doggett, 
Mills,  Mrs.  Barry,  Oldfield,  and  other  actors  of  mark. 
Drury  had  opened  with  Dryden.  The  Queen's 
Theatre,  Haymarket,  commenced  its  season  on  the 
15th  of  September,   1709,  with  Shakespeare.     The 


THE  UNITED  AND  DISUNITED  COMPANIES       291 

play  was  "Othello,"  with  Betterton  in  the  Moor; 
but  oh!  shade  of  the  bard  of  Avon,  there  was  be- 
tween the  acts  a  performance  by  "a  Mr.  Higgins,  a 
posture-master  from  Holland,"  and  the  critics,  silently 
admiring  "  old  Thomas,"  loudly  pronounced  the  feats 
of  the  pseudo-Hollander  to  be  "marvellous,"  The 
only  great  event  of  the  season  was  the  death  of  Bet- 
terton, soon  after  his  benefit,  on  the  13th  of  April, 
1 7 10,  of  which  I  have  already  spoken  at  length. 

About  this  period  the  word  encore  was  introduced 
at  the  operatic  performances  in  the  Haymarket,  and 
very  much  objected  to  by  plain-going  Englishmen. 
It  was  also  the  custom  of  some  who  desired  the  repe- 
tition of  a  song,  to  cry  altra  volta  !  ultra  volta  !  The 
Italian  phrase  was  denounced  as  vigorously  as  the 
French  exclamation ;  and  a  writer  in  the  Spectator 
asks,  when  it  may  be  proper  for  him  to  say  it  in 
English }  and  would  it  be  vulgar  to  shout  again ! 
again ! 

The  season  of  1710-11  was  a  languishing  one. 
Players  and  playgoers  seem  to  feel  that  the  great 
glory  of  the  stage  was  extinguished,  in  the  death  of 
Betterton  and  the  departure  of  Mrs.  Barry.  Collier, 
restless  and  capricious,  gave  up  Drury  Lane  for 
opera  at  the  Haymarket,  Swiney  exchanging  with 
him.  The  united  company  of  actors  assembling  at 
the  former,  contributed  JQ200  a  year  as  a  sort  of 
compensation  to  Collier,  as  well  as  refraining  from 
playing  on  a  Wednesday  when  an  opera  was  given  on 
that  night.  The  Thursday  audiences  were  all  the 
larger  for  this ;  but  the  inferior  actors,  who  were 
paid  by  the  day,  felt  the  hardship  of  this  arrange- 
ment, and  noblemen,  who  espoused  the  part  of  the 


29*  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

English  players  against  the  foreign  singers,  expressed 
an  opinion,  as  they  walked  about  behind  the  scenes, 
that  "  it  was  shameful  to  take  part  of  the  actors'  bread 
from  them,  to  support  the  silly  diversions  of  people  of 
quality." 

Booth  and  Powell  shared  the  inheritance  of  Better- 
ton,  and  Mrs.  Bradshaw  succeeded  to  that  of  Mrs. 
Barry ;  but  Mrs.  Porter  was  soon  to  dispute  it  with 
her.  The  old  stock  pieces  were  well  cast,  but  no 
new  play  obtained  toleration  for  above  a  night  or  two. 
Mrs.  Centlivre's  "Marplot,"  a  poor  sequel  to  the 
"  Busy  Body,"  brought  her  nothing  more  substantial 
than  a  dedication  fee  of  ;^40  from  the  Earl  of  Port- 
land, the  son  of  William  III.'s  "  Bentinck."  This  was 
more  than  Johnson  obtained  for  dedicating  his  con- 
demned comedy,  the  "  Generous  Husband,"  to  the 
last  of  the  three  Lords  Ashburnham,  who  were  alive 
in  1 710.  Poor  Elkanah  Settle,  too,  pensioned  poet 
of  the  city,  and  a  brother  of  the  Charterhouse,  was 
employed  by  Booth  to  adapt  Beaumont  and  Fletcher's 
"  Knight  of  the  Burning  Pestle,"  which  Elkanah 
transformed  to  the  "City  Ramble,"  Booth  playing 
Rinaldo.  Settle  was  so  unpopular  at  this  time,  that 
he  brought  out  his  play  in  the  summer  season  when 
the  town  was  scantily  peopled.  The  only  result 
was  that  it  was  damned  by  a  thin  house  instead  of 
a  crowded  one. 

At  the  close  of  the  season  Swiney  returned  to  the 
opera ;  Collier  to  Drury  Lane,  under  a  new  license 
to  himself,  Wilks,  Cibber,  and  Doggett.  Collier  with- 
drew, however,  from  the  management,  and  the  three 
actors  named  paid  him  jC700  a  year  for  doing  noth- 
ing.    From  this  time  may  be  dated  the  real  pros- 


THE  UNITED  AND  DISUNITED  COMPANIES       293 

perity  of  the  sole  and  united  company  of  actors,  for 
whom  a  halcyon  score  of  years  was  now  beginning. 
On  the  other  hand  the  opera  only  brought  ruin,  and 
drove  into  exile  its  able  but  unlucky  manager, 
Swiney. 


CHAPTER   XV. 

UNION,    STRENGTH,    PROSPERITY 

Naturally  and  justifiably  jubilant  is  CoUey  Gib- 
ber when  giving  the  history  of  the  united  companies. 
That  union  led  to  a  prosperity  of  twenty  years,  though 
the  union  itself  did  not  last  so  long.  We  now  find 
houses  crowded  beyond  anything  known  to  that 
generation  ;  and  that  not  so  much  from  surpassing 
excellence  on  the  part  of  the  actors,  as  from  their 
zeal,  industry,  and  the  willingness  with  which  they 
worked  together.  This  success  doubled  the  salaries 
of  the  comedians,  and  "  in  the  twenty  years,  while 
we  were  our  own  directors,"  says  Colley,  with  honest 
pride,  "  we  never  had  a  creditor  that  had  occasion  to 
come  twice  for  his  bill ;  every  Monday  morning  dis- 
charged us  of  all  commands,  before  we  took  a  shilling 
for  our  own  use." 

These  halcyon  days  had,  no  doubt,  their  little 
passing  clouds  ;  some  prejudice  and  jealousies  would 
arise  among  the  leaders,  as  excellence  began  to  mani- 
fest itself  from  below ;  but  these,  as  Gibber  remarks, 
with  a  lofty  philosophy,  were  "  frailties,  which  socie- 
ties of  a  higher  consideration,  while  they  are  com- 
posed of  men,  will  never  be  entirely  free  from." 
Gibber  and  his  fellows  deserved  to  prosper.  Al- 
though they  enjoyed  a  monopoly  they  did  not  abuse 

294 


UNION,  STRENGTH,  PROSPERITY  295 

it ;  and  ;^  1,5 00  profit  to  each  of  the  three  managers, 
in  one  year,  the  greatest  sum  ever  yet  so  realised  on 
the  English  stage,  showed  what  might  be  done,  with- 
out the  aid  of  "  those  barbarous  entertainments,"  of 
acrobats  and  similar  personages,  for  which  the  digni- 
fied Gibber  had  the  most  profound  and  wholesome 
horror. 

While  the  management  was  in  the  hands  of  Gibber, 
Wilks,  and  Doggett,  the  good  temper  of  the  first  was 
imperturbable.  He  yielded,  or  seemed  to  yield,  to 
the  hot  hastiness  of  Wilks,  and  lent  himself  to  the 
captious  waywardness  of  Doggett.  However  imprac- 
ticable the  latter  was.  Gibber  always  left  a  way  open 
to  reconciliation.  In  the  very  bitterest  of  their 
feuds,  "  I  never  failed  to  give  hiln  my  hat  and  *  your 
servant,'  whenever  I  met  him,  neither  of  which  he 
would  ever  return  for  above  a  year  after ;  but  I  still 
persisted  in  my  usual  salutation,  without  observing 
whether  it  was  civilly  received  or  not."  Doggett 
would  sit  sullen  and  silent,  at  the  same  table  with 
Gibber,  at  Will's  —  the  young  gentlemen  of  the  town 
loitering  about  the  room,  to  listen  to  the  critics,  or 
look  at  the  actors  —  and  Gibber  would  treat  the  old 
player  with  deference,  till  the  latter  would  graciously 
please  to  be  softened,  and  ask  for  a  pinch  of  snuff 
from  Golley's  box,  in  token  of  reconciliation. 

Almost  the  only  word  approaching  to  complaint 
advanced  by  Gibber  refers  to  public  criticism.  The 
newspapers,  and  especially  Mist's  Journal,  he  says, 
"  took  upon  them  very  often  to  censure  our  manage- 
ment, with  the  same  freedom  and  severity  as  if  we 
had  been  so  many  ministers  of  state."  This  is 
thoroughly   Gibberian   in    humour    and    expression. 


296  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

For  these  critics,  however,  Colley  had  a  supreme 
contempt.  Wilks  and  Booth,  who  succeeded  Dog- 
gett,  were  more  sensitive,  and  would  fain  have  made 
reply;  but  Gibber  remarked  that  the  noise  made 
by  the  critics  was  a  sign  of  the  ability  and  success  of 
the  management.  If  we  were  insignificant,  said  he, 
and  played  only  to  empty  houses,  these  fellows  would 
be  silent. 

When  the  fashion  of  patronising  the  folly  of  pan- 
tomimes came  in.  Gibber  reluctantly  produced  one 
at  Drury  Lane,  but  only  "  as  crutches  to  the  plays." 
In  the  regular  drama  itself,  it  seemed  immaterial  to 
him  what  he  acted,  so  that  the  piece  was  well  sup- 
ported ;  and,  accordingly,  when  the  "Orphan"  was 
revived,  and  the  town  had  just  been  falsely  told  that 
Gibber  was  dead,  "  I  quietly  stole  myself,"  he  says, 
"  into  the  part  of  the  Ghaplain,  which  I  had  not  been 
seen  in  for  many  years  before  ;  "  and  as  the  audience 
received  him  with  delight,  Golley  was  satisfied  and 
triumphant. 

In  the  first  season  the  poets  were  less  successful 
than  the  players ;  Johnson's  "  Wife's  Relief,"  and 
Mrs.  Gentlivre's  "  Perplexed  Lovers,"  were  failures. 
But  the  lady  fell  with  some  ^clat.  The  epilogue  pro- 
duced more  sensation  than  the  play.  Prince  Eugene 
was  then  in  England,  and  to  Mrs.  Oldfield  were  en- 
trusted lines  complimentary  to  the  military  talents 
of  the  prince,  and  his  brother  in  arms,  the  Duke  of 
Marlborough.  Political  feuds  were  then  so  embit- 
tered, that  the  managers  were  afraid  to  allow  the 
epilogue  to  be  spoken ;  but  on  the  second  night,  they 
fortified  themselves  by  the  chamberlain's  license,  and 
brave  Mistress  Oldfield  delivered  it,  in  spite  of  men- 


UNION,  STRENGTH,  PROSPERITY  297 

acing  letters  addressed  to  her.  The  piece  fell ;  but 
the  authoress  printed  it,  with  a  tribute  of  rhymed 
homage  to  the  prince,  who  acknowledged  the  same 
by  sending  her  a  handsome  and  heavy  gold  snuff-box, 
with  this  inscription :  "  The  present  of  his  High- 
ness Prince  Eugene  of  Savoy  to  Susanna  Centlivre." 
Those  heavy  boxes  —  some  of  them  furnished  with 
a  tube  and  spring  for  shooting  the  snuff  up  the  nose, 
—  were  then  in  fashion,  and  prince  could  hardly  give 
more  fitting  present  to  poetess  than  a  snuff-box,  for 
which  — 

"  Distant  climes  their  various  arts  employ, 
To  adorn  and  to  complete  the  modish  toy. 
Hinges  with  close-wrought  joints  from  Paris  come, 
Pictures  dear  bought  from  Venice  and  from  Rome. 

Some  think  the  part  too  small  of  modish  sand. 
Which  at  a  niggard  pinch  they  can  command. 
Nor  can  their  fingers  for  their  task  suffice, 
Their  nose  too  greedy,  not  their  hand  too  nice, 
To  such  a  height  with  these  is  fashion  grown, 
They  feed  their  very  nostrils  with  a  spoon." 

So  sang  the  Reverend  Samuel  Wesley,  in  his  some- 
what indelicate  satire  on  snuff,  addressed  to  his  sister, 
Keziah.  Mrs.  Centlivre's  box  probably  figured  at 
Dniry  Lane,  and  in  very  good  company,  with  other 
boxes  carried  by  ladies ;  for,  says  the  poet : 

•'  They  can  enchant  the  fair  to  such  degree, 
Scarce  more  admired  could  French  romances  be, 
Scarce  scandal  more  beloved  or  darling  flattery ; 
Whether  to  th'  India  House  they  take  their  way, 
Loiter  i'  the  Park,  or  at  the  toilet  stay, 
Whether  at  church  they  shine,  or  sparkle  at  the  play." 


/ 


298  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

The  great  night  of  this  season  was  that  in  which 
Philips's  version  of  Racine's  "  Andromaque "  was 
played  —  the  17th  of  March,  171 2.  Of  the  "Dis- 
tressed Mother,"  the  following  was  the  original  cast : 
Orestes,  Powell ;  Pyrrhus,  Booth ;  Pylades,  Mills ; 
Andromache,  Mrs.  Oldfield ;  Hermione,  Mrs.  Porter. 
The  English  piece  is  even  duller  than  the  French 
one ;  but  there  is  great  scope  in  it  for  good  declam- 
atory actors,  and  Booth  especially  led  the  town  on 
this  night  to  see  in  him  the  undoubted  successor  of 
Betterton. 

All  that  could  be  done  to  render  success  assured 
was  done  on  this  occasion,  not  only  by  the  poet,  but 
by  his  friends.  Before  the  tragedy  was  acted  the 
Spectator  informed  the  public  that  a  masterpiece  was 
about  to  be  represented.  On  the  first  night  there 
was  a  packed  audience  of  hearty  supporters.  During 
the  run  of  the  play,  the  Spectator  related  the  effect 
the  tender  tale  had  on  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley. 

We  learn  from  Addison,  in  the  puff  preliminary, 
that  at  the  reading  of  the  "  Distressed  Mother,"  by 
one  of  the  actors,  the  players,  who  listened,  were 
moved  to  tears,  and  that  the  reader,  in  his  turn,  was 
so  overcome  by  his  emotions  "  that  he  was  frequently 
obliged  to  lay  down  the  book,  and  pause,  to  recover 
himself  and  give  vent  to  the  humanity  which  rose  in 
him  at  some  irresistible  touches  of  the  imagined  sor- 
row." On  the  first  night  of  its  being  played,  the 
performance  was  said  to  be  '*  at  the  desire  of  several 
ladies  of  quality."  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley,  with  Will 
Honeycombe  and  Captain  Sentry,  backed  by  two  or 
three  old  servants,  —  the  captain  wearing  the  sword 
he  had  wielded  at  Steinkirk,  —  are  described  as  being 


UNION,  STRENGTH,  PROSPERITY  299 

in  the  pit,  early  —  four  o'clock,  before  the  house  was 
full  and  the  candles  were  lighted.  There  was  access 
then  for  the  public  for  a  couple  of  hours  before  the 
curtain  rose.  The  knight  thought  the  King  of 
France  could  not  strut  it  more  imposingly  than 
Booth  in  Pyrrhus.  He  found  the  plot  so  ingeniously 
complicated,  that  he  could  not  guess  how  it  would 
end,  or  what  would  become  of  Pyrrhus.  His  sympa- 
thies oscillated  between  the  ladies,  with  a  word  of 
smart  censure  now  and  then  for  either ;  calling  An- 
dromache a  perverse  widow,  and  anon,  Hermione 
"a  notable  young  baggage."  Turgid  as  this  English 
adaptation  now  seems,  —  to  Addison,  its  simplicity 
was  one  of  its  great  merits.  "Why!"  says  Sir 
Roger,  "there  is  not  a  single  sentence  in  the  play 
that  I  don't  know  the  meaning  of !  "  It  was  listened 
to  with  a  "very  remarkable  silence  and  stillness," 
broken  only  by  the  applause ;  and  a  compliment  is 
paid  to  Mills,  who  played  Pylades,  in  the  remark, 
"  though  he  speaks  but  little,  I  like  the  old  fellow  in 
whiskers  as  well  as  any  of  them." 

The  epilogue,  spoken  by  Mrs.  Oldfield,  and  un- 
doing all  the  soft  emotions  wrought  by  the  tragedy, 
was  repeated  twice,  for  several  consecutive  nights. 
The  audience  could  not  have  enough  of  it,  and  long 
years  after  they  called  for  it,  whenever  the  piece  was 
revived.  Budgell  was  the  reputed  author,  but  Ton- 
son  printed  it  with  Addison's  name  as  the  writer. 
The  latter,  however,  ordered  that  of  Budgell  to  be 
restored,  "that  it  might  add  weight  to  the  solicitation 
which  he  was  then  making  for  a  place." 

Thus  Ambrose  Philips  showed'that  he  could  write 
something  more  vigorous  than  the  Pastorals,  which 


30O  THEIR  iVlAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

had  given  him  a  name  while  at  the  university.  He 
took  higher  rank  among  the  wits  at  Button's  Coffee- 
house, and  had  no  reason  to  fear  the  censure  or  ridi- 
cule of  men  like  Henry  Carey,  who  fastened  upon 
him  the  name  of  Namby  Pamby.  Success  made  the 
author  not  less  solemn,  but  more  pompous.  He 
wore  the  sword,  which  he  could  boldly  use,  although 
his  foes  called  him  Quaker  Philips,  with  an  air; 
and  the  successful  author  of  a  new  tragedy  could 
become  arrogant  enough  to  hang  a  rod  up  at  But- 
ton's and  threaten  Pope  with  a  degrading  application 
of  it  for  having  expressed  contempt  of  the  author's 
Pastorals. 

Whatever  may  be  thought  of  this,  Rowe  and 
Philips  were  the  first  authors  of  the  last  century  who 
wrote  tragedies  which  have  been  played  in  our  own 
times.  But  a  greater  than  either  was  rising ;  for 
Addison  was  giving  the  last  touches  to  "  Cato  ; "  and 
he,  with  Steele,  and  others,  was  imparting  his  views 
and  ideas  on  the  subject  to  favourite  actors  over 
tavern  dinners. 

At  the  close  of  this  season  was  finished  the  brief 
career  of  an  actor  who  was  generally  considered  to 
possess  rare  talents,  but  who  was  variously  judged  of 
by  such  competent  judicial  authority  as  Steele  and 
Cibber.  I  allude  to  Richard  Est  court.  His  London 
career  as  a  player  lasted  little  more  than  half  a 
dozen  years,  during  which  he  distinguished  himself 
by  creating  Sergeant  Kite  and  Sir  Francis  Gripe. 
Downes  asserts  that  he  was  a  born  actor.  Steele 
mournfully  says,  "  If  I  were  to  speak  of  merit  neg- 
lected, misapplied,  or  misunderstood,  might  I  not  say 
that  Estcourt  has  a  great  capacity?   but  it  is  not 


UNION,  STRENGTH,  PROSPERITY  301 

the  interest  of  those  who  bear  a  figure  on  the  stage 
that  his  talents  were  understood.  It  is  their  business 
to  impose  upon  him  what  cannot  become  him,  or 
keep  out  of  his  hands  anything  in  which  he  could 
shine."  Chetwood  alludes  to  his  habit  of  interpo- 
lating jokes  and  catches  of  his  own,  which  raised  a 
laugh  among  the  general  public,  but  which  made 
critics  frown.  Cibber  has  been  accused  of  being 
vmjust  to  him,  but  Colley's  judgment  seems  to 
be  rendered  with  his  usual  fairness,  lucidity,  and 
skill. 

"This  man,"  says  Cibber  in  his  "Apology,"  "was 
so  amazing  and  extraordinary  a  mimic,  that  no  man 
or  woman,  from  the  coquette  to  the  Privy-Councillor, 
ever  moved  or  spoke  before  him,  but  he  could  carry 
their  voice,  look,  mien,  and  motion  instantly  into 
another  company.  I  have  heard  him  make  long 
harangues  and  form  various  arguments,  even  in  the 
manner  of  thinking,  of  an  eminent  pleader  at  the  bar 
with  every  the  least  article  and  singularity  of  his 
utterance  so  perfectly  imitated  that  he  was  the  very 
alter  ipse,  scarce  to  be  distinguished  from  his  original. 
Yet  more,  I  have  seen  upon  the  margin  of  the  writ- 
ten part  of  Falstaff,  which  he  acted,  his  own  notes 
and  observations  upon  almost  every  speech  of  it,  de- 
scribing the  true  spirit  of  the  humour,  and  with  what 
tone  of  voice,  with  what  look  or  gesture,  each  of  them 
ought  to  be  delivered.  Yet  in  his  execution  upon 
the  stage,  he  seemed  to  have  lost  all  those  just  ideas 
he  had  formed  of  it,  and  almost  through  the  char- 
acter he  laboured  under  a  heavy  load  of  flatness.  In 
a  word,  with  all  his  skill  in  mimicry,  and  knowledge 
of  what  ought  to  be  done,  he  never  upon  the  stage 


302  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

could  bring  it  truly  into  practice,  but  was,  upon  the 
whole,  a  languid,  unaffecting  actor." 

His  Kite,  however,  is  said  to  have  been  full  of 
lively,  dashing,  natural  humour.  Off  the  stage,  Est- 
court's  society  was  eagerly  sought  for,  and  he  was  to 
be  met  in  the  best  company,  where,  on  festive  nights, 
he  recited,  gave  his  imitations,  and  was  not  too  proud  to 
pocket  his  guerdon.  The  old  Duke  of  Marlborough 
gladly  held  fellowship  with  Estcourt,  and  as  the 
latter  occasionally  got  guerdon  out  of  the  duke,  he 
must  have  been  a  great  and  a  very  affecting  actor 
indeed.  It  was  probably  his  spirit  of  good-fellowship 
which  induced  him  to  leave  the  stage  (in  171 1)  for 
another  calling.  This  change  was  sufficiently  impor- 
tant for  the  Spectator  to  notice,  with  a  fine  bit  of 
raillery,  too :  "  Estcourt  has  lain  in  at  the  Bumper, 
Covent  Garden,  neat,  natural  wines,  to  be  sold  whole- 
sale, as  well  as  retail,  by  his  old  servant,  trusty  An- 
thony (Aston).  As  Estcourt  is  a  person  altogether 
unknowing  in  the  wine  trade,  it  cannot  but  be 
doubted  that  he  will  deliver  the  wine  in  the  same 
natural  purity  that  he  receives  it  from  the  merchants, 
etc." 

On  the  foundation  of  the  "  Beef  Steak  Club," 
Estcourt  was  appointed  Providore ;  and  in  the  exer- 
cise of  this  office  to  the  chief  wits  and  leading  men 
of  the  nation,  he  wore  a  small  gold  gridiron,  sus- 
pended around  his  neck  by  a  green  silk  riband. 
Doctor  King  alludes  to  the  company,  their  qualities, 
and  the  dignity  of  the  ex-actor,  in  his  "  Art  of 
Cookery  : " 

"  He  that  of  honour,  wit,  and  mirth  partakes, 
May  be  a  fit  companion  o'er  beef  steaks. 


UNION,  STRENGTH,   PROSPERITY  303 

His  name  may  be  to  future  times  unroU'd, 

In  Estcourt's  book,  whose  gridiron's  made  of  gold." 

Estcourt  died  in  1 7 1 2,  and  was  buried  in  the  "  yard  " 
of  St.  Paul's,  Covent  Garden.  Near  him  lie  Kynaston 
and  Wycherley,  Susanna  Centlivre,  Wilks,  Macklin, 
and  other  once  vivacious  stage  celebrities  of  later 
times. 

I  have  already  had  to  notice,  and  shall  have  to  do 
so  again,  the  despotic  power  exercised  by  the  lord 
chamberlain  over  theatrical  affairs.  One  of  the  most 
remarkable  instances  presents  itself  this  year,  in 
connection  with  the  Opera  House,  indeed,  but  still 
illustrative  of  my  subject.  John  Hughes,  who  will 
subsequently  appear  as  a  dramatic  author,  of  purer 
pretensions,  had  written  the  words  for  the  composer 
of  "Calypso  and  Telemachus."  A  crowd  of  the 
"quality,"  connoisseurs  and  amateurs,  had  attended 
the  rehearsal,  with  which  they  were  so  satisfied  that 
a  subscription  was  formed  to  support  the  performance 
of  the  opera.  This  aroused  the  jealousy  of  the 
Italian  company  then  in  London,  who  appealed  for 
protection  to  the  Duke  of  Shrewsbury,  the  then 
chamberlain. 

This  duke  was  the  Charles  Talbot,  in  whose  house 
it  had  been  decided  that  William  of  Orange  should 
be  invited  to  England,  and  who,  corresponding  with 
James  after  William  was  on  the  throne,  had  been 
discovered,  and  forgiven.  He  had  been  loved,  it  is 
said,  by  Queen  Mary  and  the  Duchess  of  Marlborough  ; 
but  this  able,  gentle,  wayward,  and  one-eyed  states- 
man was  at  this  present  time  the  husband  of  an 
Italian  lady,  and  on  this  fact,  albeit  she  was  not  a 


304  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

dulcis  uxor,  the  Italian  singers  founded  their  hopes. 
As  the  lady's  brother  was  hanged  at  Tyburn,  half 
a  dozen  years  later,  fcTr  murdering  his  servant,  Shrews- 
bury had  no  great  cause,  ultimately,  to  be  proud  of 
the  connection.  Nevertheless,  it  served  the  purpose 
of  the  foreign  vocalists,  it  would  seem,  as  the  cham- 
berlain protected  their  interests,  and  issued  an  order 
for  the  suppression  of  the  subscription,  adding,  that 
the  doors  must  be  opened  at  the  lowest  playhouse 
prices,  or  not  at  all.  Even  under  this  discouragement 
the  opera  was  played  with  success,  and  was  subse- 
quently revived,  with  good  effect,  at  Lincoln's  Inn 
Fields. 

Romantic  drama,  light,  bustling  comedy,  with  less 
vice  and  not  much  less  wit  than  of  old,  and  the 
severest  classical  tragedy,  challenged  the  favour  of 
the  town  in  the  Drury  Lane  season  of  1 712-13. 
Severe  tragedy  won  the  wreath  from  its  compet- 
itors. 

First  on  the  list  was  fat  Charles  Johnson,  who  was 
even  a  more  frequent  lounger  at  Button's  than  Am- 
brose Philips,  and  who  had  a  play  ready  for  represen- 
tation every  year  and  a  half.  It  is  a  curious  fact 
that  his  "  Successful  Pirate,"  a  sort  of  melodrama,  in 
five  acts,  the  scene  in  Madagascar,  and  the  action 
made  up  of  fighting  and  wooing,  aroused  the  ire  of 
the  virtuous  Dennis.  This  censor  wrote  to  the  lord 
chamberlain,  complaining  that  in  such  a  piece  as  the 
above  the  stage  was  prostituted,  villainy  encouraged, 
and  the  theatre  disgraced ;  that  same  theatre  where, 
a  few  nights  previously,  had  been  acted  the  "  Old 
Bachelor,"  and  the  "  Committee,"  which  some  people, 
like  Sir  Roger,  considered  a  "  good  Church  of  Eng- 


UNION,   STRENGTH,   PROSPERITY  305 

land  comedy."  The  piece,  however,  made  no  im- 
pression ;  nor  was  much  greater  effected  by  that 
learned  proctor,  Taverner's  "  French  Advocates,"  nor 
by  the  farcical  "  Humours  of  the  Army,"  which  the 
ex-soldier,  Charles  Shadwell,  had  partly  constructed 
out  of  his  own  military  reminiscences,  as  he  sat  at 
his  desk  in  the  revenue  office  at  Dublin. 

Equally  indifferent  were  the  public  to  a  comedy 
called  the  "  Wife  of  Bath,"  written  by  a  young  man 
who  had  been  a  mercer's  apprentice  in  the  Strand, 
and  who  was  now  house-steward  and  man  of  busi- 
ness to  the  widowed  Duchess  of  Monmouth  at  her 
residence,  no  longer  in  the  mansion  on  the  south 
side  of  Soho  Square,  about  to  be  turned  into  auction 
rooms,  but  in  fresh,  pure,  rustic  Hedge  Lane,  which 
now,  as  Whitcombe  Street,  lacks  all  freshness,  purity, 
and  rusticity.  The  young  man's  name  was  Gay; 
but  it  was  not  on  this  occasion  that  he  was  to  make 
it  famous. 

In  stem  tragedy,  the  "  Heroic  Daughter,"  founded 
on  Corneille's  "  Cid,"  wrung  no  tears,  and  "  Cinna's 
Conspiracy"  raised  no  emotions.  The  sole  success 
of  the  season  in  this  line  was  Addison's  "  Cato,"  first 
played  on  the  14th  of  April,  1713  ;  thus  cast :  Cato, 
Booth  ;  Syphax,  Cibber ;  Juba,  Wilks ;  Fortius,  Pow- 
ell ;  Sempronius,  Mills ;  Marcus,  Ryan  ;  Decius,  Bo- 
man  ;  Lucius,  Keen ;  Marcia,  Mrs.  Oldfield  ;  Lucia, 
Mrs.  Porter. 

Of  the  success  of  this  tragedy,  a  compound  of 
transcendent  beauties  and  absurdity,  I  shall  speak, 
when  treating  of  Booth,  apart.  It  established  that 
actor  as  the  great  master  of  his  art,  and  it  brought 
into  notice  young  Ryan,  the  intelligent  son  of  an 


3o6  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

Irish  tailor,  a  good  actor,  and  a  true  gentleman. 
"  Cato  "  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  represented  by 
a  band  of  superior  actors,  who  had  been  enlightened 
by  the  instruction  of  Addison,  and  stimulated  at  re- 
hearsals, by  the  sarcasm  of  Swift.  Factions  united  in 
applause  ;  purses  —  not  bouquets  —  were  presented 
to  the  chief  actor,  and  the  Cato  night  was  long  one 
of  the  traditions  about  which  old  players  loved  to 
entertain  all  listeners. 

While  thus  new  glories  were  rising,  old  ones  were 
fading  away,  or  dying  out.  Long-nosed  Tom  Durfey 
was  poor  enough  to  be  grateful  for  a  benefit  given 
in  his  behalf,  the  proceeds  of  which  furnished  him 
with  a  fresh  supply  of  sack,  and  strengthened  him  to 
new  attempt  at  song.  About  the  same  time  died  the 
last  of  the  actors  of  the  Cromwellian  times,  Will 
Peer,  one  who  was  qualified  by  nature  to  play  the 
Apothecary  in  "Romeo  and  Juliet,"  and  by  intel- 
ligence to  deliver  with  well-feigned  humility  the 
player's  prologue  to  the  play  in  "  Hamlet,"  but  whom 
old  age,  good  living,  and  success  rendered  too  fat  for 
the  first,  and  too  jolly  for  the  second. 

In  the  season  of  171 3-14,  Booth  was  associated 
in  the  license  which  Wilks,  Cibber,  and  Doggett  held 
at  the  queen's  pleasure.  Doggett  withdrew  on  a  pe- 
cuniary arrangement,  agreed  upon  after  some  litiga- 
tion, and  the  theatre  was  in  the  hands  of  the  other 
three  eminent  actors.  The  old  pieces  of  this  season 
were  admirably  cast ;  of  the  new  pieces  which  were 
failures  it  is  not  necessary  to  speak,  but  of  two  which 
have  been  played  with  success  from  that  time  down  to 
the  last  year,  some  notice  is  required.  I  allude  to 
Howe's  **Jane  Shore,"  and  Mrs.  Centlivre'?  "Won- 


UNION,   STRENGTH,   PROSPERITY  307 

der,"  The  tragedy  was  written  after  the  poet  had 
ceased  to  be  under-secretary  to  the  Duke  of  Queens- 
berry,  and  after  he  had  studied  Spanish,  in  hopes 
of  a  foreign  appointment  through  Halifax,  who,  accord- 
ing to  the  story,  only  congratulated  him  on  be- 
ing able  to  read  Don  Quixote  in  the  original !  "  Jane 
Shore"  was  brought  out  February  2,  17 14.  Hast- 
ings, Booth  ;  Dumont,  Wilks  ;  Glo'ster,  Gibber ;  Jane 
Shore,  Mrs.  Oldfield  ;  Alicia,  Mrs.  Porter.  A  greater 
contrast  to  "Cato"  could  not  have  been  devised 
than  this  domestic  tragedy,  wherein  all  the  unities 
are  violated,  the  language  is  familiar,  and  the  chief 
incidents  the  starving  of  a  repentant  wife,  and  the 
generosity  of  an  exceedingly  forgiving  husband.  The 
audience,  which  was  stirred  by  the  patriotism  of 
"  Cato,"  was  moved  to  delicious  tears  by  the  suffer- 
ings and  sorrow  of  Jane  Shore,  whose  character  Rowe 
has  elevated  in  order  to  secure  for  her  the  suffrages 
of  his  hearers.  The  character  was  a  triumph  for 
Mrs.  Oldfield,  who  had  been  trained  to  a  beautiful 
reading  of  her  part  by  Rowe  himself,  who  was  un- 
equalled as  a  reader  by  any  poet  save  Lee ;  and  "  Jane 
Shore "  as  a  success  ranked  only  next  to  "  Cato." 
The  third,  sixth,  and  tenth  nights  were  for  the 
author's  benefit.  On  the  first  two  the  boxes  and  pit 
"  were  laid  together,"  admission  half  a  guinea ;  the 
third  benefit  was  "  at  common  prices." 

Much  expectation  had  been  raised  by  this  piece, 
and  it  was  realised  to  the  utmost.  It  was  otherwise 
with  the  "  Wonder,"  from  which  little  was  expected, 
but  much  success  ensued.  The  sinning  wife  and 
moaning  husband  of  the  tragedy  were  the  lively  lady 
and  the  quick-tempered  lover  of  this  comedy.     The 


3o8  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

Violanthe  of  Mrs.  Oldfield  and  the  Don  Felix  of 
Wilks  were  talked  of  in  every  coffee-house.  The 
wits  about  the  door,  and  the  young  poets  in  the  back 
room  at  the  new  house  set  up  by  Button,  talked  as 
vivaciously  about  it  as  their  rivals  at  Tom's,  on  the 
opposite  side  of  the  way ;  and  every  prophecy  they 
made  of  the  success  of  the  comedy  in  times  to  come, 
does  credit  to  them  as  soothsayers. 

The  death  of  Queen  Anne,  on  the  ist  of  August, 
17 14,  cannot  be  said  to  have  prematurely  closed  the 
summer  season  of  this  year.  However,  the  actors 
mourned  for  a  month,  and  then  a  portion  of  them 
played  joyously  enough,  for  awhile,  in  Pinkethman's 
booth  at  Southwark  Fair. 

At  this  period  the  stage  lost  a  lady  who  was  as 
dear  to  it  as  Queen  Anne,  namely,  Mrs.  Bradshaw. 
Her  departure,  however,  was  caused  by  marriage,  not 
by  death ;  and  the  gentleman  who  carried  her  off,  in- 
stead of  being  a  rollicking  gallant,  or  a  worthless 
peer,  was  a  staid,  solemn,  worthy  antiquary,  Martin 
Folkes,  who  rather  surprised  the  town  by  wedding 
young  Mistress  Bradshaw.  The  lady  had  been  on 
the  stage  about  eighteen  years ;  she  had  trodden  it 
from  early  childhood,  and  always  with  unblemished 
reputation.  She  had  her  reward  in  an  excellent,  sen- 
sible, and  wealthy  husband,  to  whom  her  exemplary 
and  prudent  conduct  endeared  her  ;  and  the  happi- 
ness of  this  couple  was  well  established.  Probably, 
when  Martin  was  away  on  Friday  evenings,  at  the 
Young  Devil  Tavern,  where  the  members  of  the  so- 
ciety of  antiquaries  met,  upon  "  pain  of  forfeiture  of 
sixpence,"  Mrs.  Folkes  sat  quietly  at  home,  thinking 
without  sadness  of  the  bygone  times  when  she  won 


UNION,   STRENGTH,   PROSPERITY  309 

applause  as  the  originator  of  the  characters  of  Co- 
rinna,  in  the  "  Conspirator,"  Sylvia,  in  the  "  Double 
Gallant,"  and  Arabella  Zeal,  in  the  "  Fair  Quaker." 
In  other  respects,  Mistress  Bradshaw  is  one  of  the 
happy,  honest  women  who  have  no  history. 

If  the  age  of  Queen  Anne  was  not  quite  so  fully 
the  golden  age  of  authors  as  it  has  been  supposed  to 
be,  it  was  still  remarkable  for  a  patronage  of  literature 
hitherto  unparallelled.  Addison,  Congreve,  Gay,  Am- 
brose Philips,  Rowe,  were  among  the  dramatic  authors 
who,  with  men  of  much  humbler  pretensions,  held 
public  offices,  were  patronised  by  the  great,  or  lived 
at  their  ease.  With  the  death  of  this  queen,  the 
patent  or  license,  held  by  Wilks,  Gibber,  Booth,  and 
Doggett,  died  also.  In  the  new  license,  Steele,  who, 
since  we  last  met  with  him  at  the  play,  had  endured 
variety  of  fortune,  was  made  a  partner.  He  had  mar- 
ried that  second  wife  whom  he  treated  so  politely  in 
his  little  failures  of  allegiance.  He  had  established 
the  Tailer,  cooperated  in  the  Spectator^  had  begun 
and  terminated  the  Guardian,  and  had  started  the 
Englishman.  He  had  serv^  the  Duke  of  Marl- 
borough in  and  out  of  office,  and  had  been  elected 
M.  P.  for  Stockbridge,  after  nobly  resigning  his 
commissionership  of  stamps,  and  his  pension  as  "ser- 
vant to  the  late  Prince  George  of  Denmark."  He 
had  been  expelled  the  House  for  writing  what  the 
House  called  seditious  pamphlets,  and  had  then  re- 
turned to  literature,  and  now  to  occupation  as  a  man- 
ager. From  the  new  government,  under  the  new 
king,  by  whom  he  was  soon  after  knighted,  Steele 
had  influence  enough  to  ultimately  obtain  a  patent, 
in  the  names  of  himself,  Booth,  Wilks  and  Gibber, 


3IO  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

which  protected  them  from  some  small  tyrannies  with 
which  they  were  occasionally  visited  by  the  officials 
in  the  lord  chamberlain's  office. 

The  season  of  17 14-15  was  not  especially  remark- 
able, save  for  this,  that  the  great  actors  who  were 
patentees  frequently  played  small  parts,  in  order  to 
give  young  actors  a  chance.  It  was  not  given,  how- 
ever, to  every  young  actor ;  for,  on  the  20th  of  April, 
1 71 5,  when  Rowe's  "  Lady  Jane  Grey  "  was  produced 
(Dudley,  Booth ;  Lady  Jane,  Mrs.  Oldfield),  the  very 
insignificant  part  of  the  Lieutenant  of  the  Tower  was 
played  by  a  new  actor  from  Ireland,  —  one  James 
Quin,  who  was  destined  to  equal  Booth  in  some  parts, 
and  to  be  surpassed  in  some  by  an  actor  yet  at  school, 
—  David  Garrick. 

Charles  Johnson  was,  of  course,  ready  with  a  com- 
edy, stolen  from  various  sources,  — "  Country  Lasses." 
Gay,  who  had  returned  from  Hanover  with  the  third 
Earl  of  Clarendon,  whose  secretary  he  had  become, 
after  leaving  the  service  of  the  Duchess  of  Monmouth, 
produced  his  hilarious  burlesque  of  old  and  modem 
tragedies,  — the  "Wl^t  d'ye  Call  It.?"  The  satire 
of  this  piece  was  so  fine,  that  deaf  gentlemen  who 
saw  the  tragic  action  and  could  not  hear  the  words, 
and  the  new  sovereign  and  court  who  heard  the  words 
but  could  not  understand  their  sense,  were  put  into 
great  perplexity ;  while  the  honest  galleries,  reached 
by  the  solemn  sounds,  and  taking  manner  for  matter, 
were  affected  to  such  tears  as  they  could  shed,  at  the 
most  farcical  and  high-sounding  similes.  It  was  only 
after  awhile  that  the  joke  was  comprehended,  and 
that  the  "  What  d'ye  Call  It } "  was  seen  to  be  a 
•capital  burlesque  of  "Venice  Preserved."     The  very 


UNION,   STRENGTH,   PROSPERITY  311 

Templars,  who  of  course  comprehended  it  all,  from 
the  first,  and  went  to  hiss  the  piece,  for  the  honour 
of  Otway,  could  not  do  so,  for  laughing ;  and  this  only 
perplexed  the  more  the  matter-of-fact  people,  not  so 
apt  to  discover  a  joke. 

Rowe's  "  Lady  Jane  "  did  not  prove  so  attractive 
as  "  Jane  Shore."  There  were  only  innocence  and 
calamity  wherewith  to  move  the  audience ;  no  guilt ; 
no  profound  intrigue.  But  there  is  much  force  in 
some  of  the  scenes.  The  very  variety  of  the  latter, 
indeed,  was  alleged  against  the  author,  as  a  defect, 
by  the  many  slaves  of  the  unity  of  time  and  place. 
It  was  objected  to  Rowe,  that  in  his  violation  of  the 
unities  he  went  beyond  other  offenders,  —  not  only 
changing  the  scene  with  the  acts,  but  varying  it 
within  the  acts.  For  this,  however,  he  had  good 
authority  in  older  and  better  dramatists.  "  To  change 
the  scene,  as  is  done  by  Rowe,  in  the  middle  of  an 
act,  is  to  add  more  acts  to  the  play  ;  since  an  act  is  so 
much  of  the  business  as  is  transacted  without  inter- 
ruption. Rowe,  by  this  license,  easily  extricates  him- 
self from  difficulties,  as  in  *  Lady  Jane  Grey,'  when 
we  have  been  terrified  by  all  the  dreadful  pomp  of 
public  execution,  and  are  wondering  how  the  heroine 
or  poet  will  proceed  ;  no  sooner  has  Jane  pronounced 
some  prophetic  rhymes  than  —  pass  and  be  gone  — 
the  scene  closes,  and  Pembroke  and  Gardner  are 
turned  out  upon  the  stage."  The  critic  wished  to 
stay  and  witness  a  "public  execution,"  not  satisfied 
with  the  pathos  of  the  speech  uttered  by  Jane,  and 
which,  for  tenderness,  sets  the  scene  in  fine  contrast 
with  that  of  the  quarrelling  and  reconciliation  between 
Pembroke  and  Guilford.     Rowe's  Jane  Grey  interests 


312  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

the  heart  more  fully  than  Jane  Shore  or  Calista ;  but 
the  last  two  ladies  have  a  touch  of  boldness  about 
them,  in  which  the  first,  from  her  very  innocence,  is 
wanting;  and  audiences  are,  therefore,  more  excited 
by  the  loudly  proclaimed  wrongs  of  the  women  who 
have  gone  astray  than  by  the  tender  protests  of  the 
victim  who  suffers  for  the  crimes  of  others. 

George  Powell  ended  his  seven  and  twentieth 
season  this  year,  at  the  close  of  which  he  died.  For 
the  old  actor  gone,  a  young  actress  appeared,  —  Mrs. 
Horton,  "  one  of  the  most  beautiful  women  that  ever 
trod  the  stage."  She  had  been  a  "  stroller,"  ranting 
tragedy  in  barns  and  country  towns,  and  playing 
Cupid  in  a  booth  at  suburban  fairs.  The  attention 
of  managers  was  directed  toward  her ;  and  Booth, 
after  seeuig  her  act  in  Southwark,  engaged  her  for 
Drury  I.ane,  where  her  presence  was  more  agreeable 
to  the  public  than  particularly  pleasant  to  dear  Mrs. 
Oldfield. 


CHAPTER   XVI. 

COMPETITION,    AND    WHAT   CAME   OF    IT 

"Augustus,"  as  it  was  the  fashion  to  call  George 
I.,  by  performing  a  justifiable  act,  inflicted  some 
injury  this  year,  by  restoring  the  letters  patent  of 
Charles  II,  to  Christopher  Rich,  of  which  the  latter 
had  been  deprived,  and  under  which  his  son,  John, 
opened  the  revived  theatre  in  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields, 
on  the  1 8th  December,  1714,  with  the  "Recruiting 
Officer."  The  enlarged  stage  was  "superbly  adorned 
with  looking-glasses  on  both  sides ;  "  a  circumstance 
which,  Quin  said,  "was  an  excellent  trap  to  such 
actresses  who  admired  their  own  persons  more  than 
they  attended  to  the  duties  of  their  profession."  Some 
good  actors  left  Drury  for  the  Fields :  Keen,  the  two 
Bullocks,  Pack,  Spiller,  Cory,  Knapp,  Mrs.  Rogers, 
and  Mrs.  Knight.  Cibber  rather  contemptuously  says 
of  such  of  the  above  as  he  names,  that  "  they  none 
of  them  had  more  than  a  negative  merit,  —  being 
able  only  to  do  us  more  harm  by  leaving  us  without 
notice,  than  they  could  do  us  good  by  remaining  with 
us ;  for,  though  the  best  of  them  could  not  support 
a  play,  the  worst  of  them,  by  their  absence,  could 
maim  it,  —  as  the  loss  of  the  least  pin  in  a  watch 
may  obstruct  its  motion." 

3U 


314  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

John  Rich's  company  in  the  Fields  either  played 
old  pieces,  or  adaptations  from  them,  or  "from  the 
French ; "  none  of  which  deserved  even  a  passing 
word,  except  a  roaring  farce  —  pieces  which  now 
grew  popular  —  called  "  Love  in  a  Sack,"  by  Griffin, 
whom  I  notice  not  as  an  indifferent  author,  but  as 
an  excellent  comedian,  who  first  made  his  appear- 
ance in  a  double  capacity.  Griffin  may  also  be 
noticed  under  a  double  qualification.  He  was  a 
gentleman  and  a  glazier.  His  father  was  a  Norfolk 
rector,  and  had  been  chaplain  to  the  Earl  of  Yar- 
mouth,—  that  gallant  Sir  Robert  Paston,  who  was 
in  France  and  Flanders  with  James,  Duke  of  York. 
In  the  Paston  Free  School,  at  North  Walshaitt, 
Griffin  learnt  his  "rudiments,"  having  done  which, 
his  sire  apprenticed  him  to  the  useful  but  not  digni- 
fied calling  of  a  glazier.  The  "  'prentice  lad,"  dis- 
gusted at  the  humiliation,  ran  away,  took  to  strolling, 
found  his  way,  after  favourable  report,  to  Rich's 
theatre,  and  there  proved  so  good  an  actor,  that  the 
Drury  Lane  management  ultimately  lured  him  away 
to  a  stage  where  able  competitors  polished  him  into 
still  greater  brilliancy.  The  season  concluded  on 
the  last  day  of  July,  1715,  with  a  "benefit  for  Tim 
Buck,  to  release  him  out  of  prison." 

In  the  following  October,  Drury  commenced  a 
season  which,  save  a  few  days  of  summer  vacation, 
extended  to  the  close  of  August,  17 16.  During  this 
time,  Shakespeare's  best  plays  were  frequently  acted, 
old  comedies  revived  with  success,  and  obscure  farces 
played  and  consigned  to  oblivion.  The  great  attempt, 
if  not  success,  of  the  season,  was  the  comedy  of  the 
"  Drummer,  or  the  Haunted  House,"  first  played  in 


COMPETITION,  AND  WHAT  CAME,  OF  IT         315 

March,  1716,  and  not  known  to  be  Addison's  till 
Steele  published  the  fact,  after  the  author's  death. 
Tonson,  however,  knew  or  suspected  the  truth,  for 
he  gave  ^^50  for  the  copyright.  Wilks,  Gibber, 
Mills,  and  Mrs.  Oldfield  could  not  secure  a  triumph 
for  the  play  —  which  Steele  thought  was  more  dis- 
graceful to  the  stage  than  to  the  comedy.  There 
is  a  novel  mixture  of  sentiment,  caricature,  and  farci- 
cal incident  in  this  piece.  Warton  describes  it  as 
"a  just  picture  of  life  and  real  manners;  where  the 
poet  never  speaks  in  his  own  person,  or  totally  drops 
or  forgets  a  character,  for  the  sake  of  introducing 
a  brilliant  simile  or  acute  remark ;  where  no  train  is 
laid  for  wit,  no  Jeremys  or  Bens  are  suffered  to 
appear."  More  natural,  it  was  less  brilliant  than  the 
artificial  comedies  of  Congreve ;  but  its  failure  prob- 
ably vexed  the  author,  as  it  certainly  annoyed  the 
publisher.  Tickell  omitted  it  from  his  edition  of 
Addison's  works,  but  Steele  gave  these  reasons  for 
ascribing  it  to  the  latter ;  they  are  a  little  confused, 
but  they  probably  contain  the  truth :  "If  I  remem- 
ber right,  the  fifth  act  was  written  in  a  week's 
time.  .  .  .  He  would  walk  about  his  room,  and  dic- 
tate in  language  with  as  much  freedom  and  ease 
as  any  one  could  write  it  down.  ...  I  have  been 
often  thus  employed  by  him.  ...  I  will  put  all  my 
credit  among  men  of  wit,  for  the  truth  of  my  aver- 
ment, when  I  presume  to  say,  that  no  one  but  Mr. 
Addison  was  in  any  other  way  the  writer  of  the 
•  Drummer.'  ...  At  the  same  time,  I  will  allow 
that  he  has  sent  for  me  .  .  .  and  told  me  that  *a 
gentleman,  then  in  the  room,  had  written  a  play 
that  he  was  sure  I  would  like;  but  it  was  to  be  a 


3i6  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

secret ;  and  he  knew  I  would  take  as  much  pains, 
since  he  recommended  it,  as  I  would  for  him.*" 

At  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  the  season  of  171 5-16 
had  this  of  remarkable  in  it,  that  John  Rich  revived 
the  "Prophetess,"  as  it  enabled  him  to  display  his 
ability  in  the  introduction  and  management  of  ma- 
chinery, and  his  success  in  raising  the  prices  of 
admission.  Bullock's  farce,  the  "  Cobbler  of  Preston," 
was  begun  on  a  Friday,  finished  the  next  day,  and 
played  on  the  Tuesday  following,  in  order  to  antici- 
pate Charles  Johnson's  farce  —  like  this,  derived  from 
the  introduction  to  the  "  Taming  of  the  Shrew  "  — 
at  Drury  Lane.  Of  the  other  plays,  one,  the  *'  Fatal 
Vision,"  was  written  by  Aaron  Hill,  who,  having  lost 
property  and  temper  in  a  project  how  to  extract 
olive-oil  from  beech-nuts,  endeavoured  to  inculcate 
in  his  piece  the  wrongfulness  of  giving  way  to  rash 
designs  and  evil  passions.  This  play  he  dedicated 
to  the  two  most  merciless  critics  of  the  day,  Dennis 
and  Gildon.  Then  of  the  "Perfidious  Brother,"  it 
is  only  to  be  stated  that  it  was  a  bad  play  stolen 
by  young  Theobald  from  Mestayer,  a  watchmaker, 
who  had  lent  him  the  manuscript.  That  an  attorney 
should  have  the  reprehensible  taste  to  steal  a  worth- 
less play  seemed  a  slur  upon  the  lawyer's  judgment. 
Another  new  play,  the  "  Northern  Heiress,"  by  Mrs. 
Davys,  a  clergyman's  widow,  but  now  the  lively  Irish 
mistress  of  a  Cambridge  coffee-house,  reminds  me  of 
the  five-act  farces  of  Reynolds,  with  its  fops,  fools, 
half-pay  officers,  fast  gentlemen,  and  flippant  ladies. 
There  are  ten  people  married  at  the  end,  a  compli- 
ment to  matrimony  at  the  hands  of  the  widow ;  but 
there  is  a  slip  in  poetical  justice,  for  a  lover  who 


COMPETITION,  AND  WHAT  CAME  OF  IT         317 

deserts  his  mistress,  when  he  finds,  as  Lord  Peter. 
borough  did  of  Miss  Moses,  that  her  fortune  was 
not  equal  to  his  expectations,  marries  her,  after 
discovering  that  he  was  mistaken. 

Herewith  we  come  to  the  Drury  Lane  season  of 
1 716-17.  Booth,  Wilks,  and  Gibber  had  a  famous 
company,  in  which  Quin  quietly  made  his  way  to 
the  head,  and  Mrs.  Horton's  beauty  acted  with  good 
effect  on  Mrs.  Oldfield.  In  the  way  of  novelty,  Mrs. 
Centlivre  produced  a  tragedy,  the  "  Cruel  Gift,"  in 
which  nobody  dies,  and  lovers  are  happily  married. 
The  most  notable  affair,  however,  was  the  comedy, 
"Three  Hours  After  Marriage,"  in  which  Gay,  Pope, 
and  Arbuthnot,  three  grave  men,  who  pretended  to 
instruct  and  improve  mankind,  insulted  modesty, 
virtue,  and  common  decency,  in  the  grossest  way, 
by  speech  or  innuendo.  There  is  not  so  much  filth 
in  any  other  comedy  of  this  century,  and  the  trio  of 
authors  stand  stigmatised  for  their  attempt  to  bring 
in  the  old  corruption.  In  strange  contrast  we  have 
Mrs.  Manley,  a  woman  who  began  life  with  unmerited 
misfortune,  and  carried  it  on  with  unmitigated  prof- 
ligacy, producing  a  highly  moral,  semi-religious  drama, 
"  Lucius." 

But  while  moral  poets  were  polluting  the  stage, 
and  immoral  women  undertaking  to  purify  it,  a  rev- 
erend Archdeacon  of  Stowe,  the  historian,  Lawrence 
Echard,  in  conjunction  with  Lestrange,  put  on  the 
stage  of  Drury  Lane  a  translation  of  the  "  Eunuchus  " 
of  Terence.  It  did  not  survive  the  third  night ;  but 
the  audience  might  have  remarked  how  much  more 
refinedly  the  Carthaginian  of  old  could  treat  a  deli- 
cate subject  than  the  Christian  poets  of  a  later  era 


3i8  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

—  or,  to  speak  correctly,  than  the  later  poets  of  a 
Christian  era. 

In  this  season  I  find  the  first  trace  of  a  "  fashion- 
able night,"  and  a  later  hour  for  beginning  the  play 
than  any  of  subsequent  times.  I  quote  from  Genest : 
'•  1 8  June,  1 7 1 7.  By  particular  desire  of  several  ladies 
of  quality.  *  Fatal  Marriage.'  Biron,  Booth  ;  Ville- 
roy,  Mills ;  Isabella,  Mrs,  Porter ;  Victoria,  Mrs. 
Younger.  An  exact  computation  being  made  of  the 
number  which  the  pit  and  boxes  will  hold,  they  are 
laid  together,  and  no  person  can  be  admitted  without 
tickets.  By  desire  the  play  is  not  to  begin  till  nine 
o'clock,  by  reason  of  the  heat  of  the  weather  —  nor 
the  house  to  be  opened  till  eight."  What  a  change 
from  the  time  when  Dryden's  Lovely  exclaimed  : 

♦»  As  punctual  as  three  o'clock  at  the  playhouse ! " 

The  corresponding  season  (17 16-17)  ^t  Lincoln's 
Inn  requires  but  brief  notice.  Rich,  who  had  failed 
in  attempting  Essex,  played,  as  Mr.  Lun,  Harlequin 
in  the  ♦'  Cheats,  or  the  Tavern  Bilkers,"  a  ballet-pan- 
tomime—  the  forerunner  of  the  line  of  pantomime, 
which,  not  withstanding  our  presumed  advance  in 
civilisation,  still  has  its  admirers.  In  novelty,  Dick 
Leveredge,  the  singer,  produced  the  burlesque  of 
♦' Pyramus  and  Thisbe,"  —  those  parts  being  played 
by  himself  and  Pack  with  irresistible  comic  effect, 
especially  when  caricaturing  the  style  of  the  Italian 
opera,  where  your  hero  died  in  very  good  time  and 
tune.  English  opera  was  not  altogether  neglected 
in  the  Fields,  but  little  was  accomplished  in  the  way 
of  upholding  the  drama.  Bullock  produced  a  comedy, 
which  he  was  accused  of  stealing  from  a  manuscript 


COMPETITION,  AND  WHAT  CAME  OF  IT         3I9 

by  Savage,  — '■  "  Woman's  a  Riddle."  It  was  a  long, 
coarse  farce,  in  which  the  most  decent  incident  is  the 
hanging  of  Sir  Amorous  Vainwit  from  a  balcony  as 
he  is  trying  to  escape  in  woman's  clothes,  which  are 
caught  by  a  hook,  and  beneath  which  a  footman  stands 
with  a  flambeau.  We  learn,  too,  from  this  comedy, 
that  young  ladies  carried  snuff-boxes  in  those  days. 

Taverner,  the  proctor,  also  produced  a  comedy 
quite  as  extravagant  and  not  a  whit  less  immoral 
than  Bullock's,  —  the  "Artful  Husband."  It  had, 
however,  great  temporary  success,  quite  enough  to 
turn  the  author's  head,  and  by  his  acts  to  show 
that  there  was  nothing  in  it. 

"The  Artful  Husband,"  however,  brought  into 
notice  a  young  actor  who  had  but  a  small  part  to 
play,  —  Stockwell.  His  name  was  Spiller.  The  Duke 
of  Argyle  thought  and  spoke  well  of  him  before  this. 
On  the  night  in  question  Spiller,  who  dressed  his 
characters  like  an  artist,  went  through  his  first  scenes 
exquisitely  and  without  being  recognised  by  his  pa- 
tron, who  came  behind  the  scenes,  and  had  recom- 
mended him  warmly  to  the  notice  of  Rich.  Genest 
says  he  hopes  this  story  is  true.  I  am  sure  it  is  not 
improbable,  and  for  this  reason  :  I  once  saw  Lafont 
acting  the  son  in  "  P^re  et  Fils."  Opposite  to  the 
side  on  which  he  made  his  exit  an  aged  actor  who 
represented  the  father  passed  me.  I  was  delighted 
with  the  truth  and  beauty  of  his  acting,  and  at  the 
end  of  the  scene  asked  who  he  was.  To  my  aston- 
ishment I  heard  that  Lafont,  whom  I  had  well 
known  as  an  actor  for  more  than  twenty  years,  was 
playing  both  parts.  This  identifying  power  was 
Spiller's  distinguishing  merit.     Riccoboni  saw   the 


320  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

young  actor  play  an  old  man  with  a  perfectness  not 
to  be  expected  but  from  players  of  the  longest  expe- 
rience. "  How  great  was  my  surprise,"  says  Ricco- 
boni,  "when  I  learned  that  he  was  a  young  man 
about  the  age  of  twenty-six.  I  could  not  beheve  it ; 
but  owned  that  it  might  be  possible  had  he  only 
used  a  broken  and  a  trembling  voice,  and  had  only  an 
extreme  weakness  possessed  his  body,  because  I  con- 
ceived that  a  young  actor  might,  by  the  help  of  art, 
imitate  that  debility  of  nature  to  such  a  pitch  of 
excellence ;  but  the  wrinkles  of  his  face,  his  sunk 
eyes,  and  his  loose,  yellow  cheeks,  the  most  certain 
marks  of  age,  were  incontestable  proofs  against  what 
they  said  to  me.  Notwithstanding  all  this,  I  was 
forced  to  submit  the  truth,  because  I  was  credibly 
informed  that  the  actor,  to  fit  himself  for  the  part 
of  this  old  man,  spent  an  hour  in  dressing  himself, 
and  disguised  his  face  so  nicely,  and  painted  so  arti- 
ficially a  part  of  his  eyebrows  and  eyelids,  that  at  the 
distance  of  six  paces  it  was  impossible  not  to  be 
deceived." 

In  the  next  season,  at  Drury  (171 7-18),  the  only 
remarkable  piece  produced  was  Gibber's  adaptation 
of  " Tartuffe,"  under  the  name  of  the  "Nonjuror." 
In  the  lustre  of  the  "Nonjuror"  paled  and  died  out 
the  first  play  by  Savage,  "Love  in  a  Veil."  Not 
twenty  years  had  elapsed  since  this  luckless  and 
heartless  young  vagabond  was  born  in  Fox  Court, 
Gray's  Inn's  Lane,  his  unknown  mother,  but  not 
that  light  lady,  the  Countess  Macclesfield,  wearing 
a  mask.  Savage  had  passed  from  a  shoemaker's 
shop  to  the  streets,  had  written  a  poem  on  the  Ban- 
dorian  Controversy,  had  adapted  a  pla^  translated 


COMPETITION,  AND  WHAT  CAME  OF  IT         321 

from  the  Spanish  by  the  wife  of  Mr.  Baron  Price, 
and  which  Bullock  readapted  and  produced  at  Drury 
Lane  before  Savage  could  get  his  own  accepted. 
"  Love  in  a  Veil "  seems  to  have  been  founded  on 
an  incident  in  the  Spanish  comedy ;  but  however 
this  may  be,  it  failed  to  obtain  the  public  approval. 
The  author,  however,  did  not  altogether  fail ;  gener- 
ous Wilks  patronised  the  boy,  and  Steele,  befriending 
a  lad  of  parts,  designed  to  give  him  ;^i,ooo,  which 
he  had  not  got,  with  the  hand  of  a  natural  daughter, 
whom  the  young  and  wayward  poet  did  not  get.  The 
"Nonjuror"  alone  survives  as  a  memorial  of  the 
Drury  season  of  17 17-18. 

We  owe  the  piece  to  fear  and  hatred  of  the  Pope 
and  the  Pretender.  It  addressed  itself  to  so  wide  a 
public,  that  Lintot  gave  the  liberal  sum  of  a  hundred 
guineas  for  the  copyright ;  and  it  was  so  acceptable 
to  the  king,  that  he  gave  a  dedication  fee  of  twice 
that  number  of  guineas  to  the  author,  who  addressed 
him  as  "dread  Sir,"  and  spoke  of  himself  as  "the 
lowest  of  your  subjects  from  the  theatre."  Gibber 
adds,  "  Your  comedians.  Sir,  are  an  unhappy  society, 
whom  some  severe  heads  think  wholly  useless,  and 
others,  dangerous  to  the  young  and  innocent.  This 
comedy  is,  therefore,  an  attempt  to  remove  that 
prejudice,  and  to  show  what  honest  and  laudable 
uses  may  be  made  of  the  theatre  when  its  perform- 
ances keep  close  to  the  true  purposes  of  its  institu- 
tion." 

Gibber  goes  on  to  remark,  that  perhaps  the  idly 
and  seditiously  inclined  may  cease  to  disturb  their 
brains  about  embarrassing  the  government  if  "  proper 
amusements  "  be  provided  for  them.     For  such,  hi§ 


322  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

play  is  rather  a  chastisement  than  an  amusement, 
and  he  thinks  that  would  have  been  all  the  better 
taken  had  it  not  been  administered  by  a  comedian ! 
The  Nonjurors,  whose  allegiance  was  paid  to  the 
Pretender,  were  perhaps  not  worthy  of  a  more 
exalted  scourger ;  but  he  fears  that  truth  and  loy- 
alty demanded  a  nobler  champion.  He  flatteringly 
alludes  to  the  small  number  of  malcontents.  His 
piece  had  either  crushed  them,  or  their  forces  were 
not  so  great  as  supposed,  **  there  being  no  assembly 
where  people  are  so  free  and  apt  to  speak  their 
minds  as  in  a  crowded  theatre,  of  which,"  says  the 
courtly  fellow,  "  your  Majesty  may  have  lately  seen 
an  instance  in  the  insuppressible  acclamations  that 
were  given  on  your  appearing  to  honour  this  play 
with  your  royal  presence." 

On  the  night  of  representation  Rowe,  in  a  pro- 
logue,—  he  was  now  poet  laureate  and  land  sur- 
veyor of  the  customs  in  the  port  of  London,  — 
deprecated  the  piece  being  considered  unjustifiably 
discourteous. 

"  Think  not  our  colours  may  too  strongly  paint 
The  stiff  nonjuring  separation  saint. 
Good  breeding  ne'er  commands  us  to  be  civil 
To  those  who  give  the  nation  to  the  devil !  " 

The  play  was  admirably  acted  by  Booth,  Colonel 
Woodvil ;  Mills,  Sir  John ;  Wilks,  Sir  Heartley ; 
Gibber,  Doctor  Wolf  (the  Cantwell  of  the  modern 
arrangement) ;  and  Walker  (soon  to  be  famous  as 
Captain  Macheath),  Charles.  Mrs.  Porter  played 
Lady  Woodvil,  and  Mrs.  Oldfield  turned  the  heads 
and  touched  the  hearts  of  all  lively  and  susceptible 


COMPETITION,  AND  WHAT  CAME  OF  IT         323 

folks  by  her  exquisite  coquetry  in  Maria.  The  play 
was  not  a  servile  imitation  of,  but  an  excellent  adap- 
tation to  modern  circumstances  of  the  "Tartuffe." 
Thoroughly  English,  it  abounds  with  the  humour 
and  manner  of  Gibber,  and,  despite  some  offences 
against  taste,  it  was  at  this  time  the  purest  comedy 
on  the  stage.  There  was  farce  enough  for-  the  gal- 
lery, maxim  and  repartee,  suggestions  and  didactic 
phrases  for  the  rest  of  the  house.  The  success  sur- 
passed even  expectation.  It  raised  against  Gibber  a 
phalanx  of  implacable  foes,  —  foes  who  howled  at 
everything  of  which  he  was  afterward  the  author ; 
but  it  gained  for  him  his  advancement  to  the  poet 
laureateship,  and  an  estimation  which  caused  some 
people  to  place  him,  for  usefulness  to  the  cause  of 
true  religion,  on  an  equality  with  the  author  of  "The 
Whole  Duty  of  Man  ! "  Gibber  foresaw  the  tempest, 
and,  probably,  also  the  prosperous  gales  which  were 
to  follow,  to  which  there  is  some  allusion  in  the  epi- 
logue spoken  by  Mrs.  Oldfield,  which,  of  course,  had 
a  fling  against  marriage. 

«« Was't  not  enough  that  critics  might  pursue  him? 
But  must  he  rouse  a  party  to  undo  him  ? 
These  blows,  I  told  him,  on  his  plays  would  fall : 
But,  he  unmov'd,  cried 's  blood !  we'll  stand  it  all ! " 

In  the  theatre  itself  the  opposition  to  the  piece 
was  confined,  Gibber  says,  to  "  a  few  smiles  of  silent 
contempt."  As  the  satire  was  chiefly  employed 
on  the  enemies  of  the  government,  they  were  not 
so  hardy  as  to  own  themselves  such,  by  any  higher 
disapprobation  or  resentment.  They  made  up  for 
this  constrained  silence,  as  above  noted,  and  Misfs 


3*4  tHElR  MAJESTIES*  SERVANTS 

Journal,  for  fifteen  years,  lost  no  opportunity  of  maul- 
ing the  detested  offender.  With  the  editor  of  that 
paper,  says  Gibber,  "though  I  could  never  persuade 
my  wit  to  have  an  open  account  with  him  (for,  as  he 
had  no  effects  of  his  own,  I  did  not  think  myself 
obliged  to  answer  his  bills),  notwithstanding,  I  will 
be  so  charitable  to  his  real  manes,  and  to  the  ashes 
of  his  paper,  as  to  mention  one  particular  civility  he 
paid  to  my  memory  after  he  thought  he  had  ingen- 
iously killed  me.  Soon  after  the  '  Nonjuror '  had 
received  the  favour  of  the  town,  I  read  in  one  of  his 
journals  the  following  short  paragraph :  '  Yesterday 
died  Mr.  Colley  Gibber,  late  comedian  of  the  Theatre 
Royal,  notorious  for  writing  the  "  Nonjuror."  '  The 
compliment  in  the  latter  part,  I  confess,"  adds 
Gibber,  "  I  did  not  dislike,  because  it  came  from  so 
impartial  a  judge." 

The  stage  lost  this  year  an  excellent  actor,  Irish 
Bowen,  who,  at  the  age  of  fifty-two,  was  slain  in 
duel  by  young  Quin,  Hitherto  the  sword  had  dealt 
lightly  with  actors.  In  1692,  indeed,  Sandford  nearly 
killed  Powell,  on  the  stage.  On  the  13th  of  October 
they  were  acting  together,  in  "  Oedipus,  King  of 
Thebes,"  when  the  former,  to  whom  a  real  dagger 
had  been  delivered  by  the  property  man,  instead 
of  a  weapon  the  blade  of  which  run  up,  when  the 
point  was  pressed,  into  the  handle,  gave  poor  Powell 
a  stab  three  inches  deep;  the  wound  was,  at  first, 
thought  to  be  mortal ;  but  Powell  recovered.  Five 
years  later,  in  July,  1697,  I  find  brief  mention  in  the 
papers  of  a  duel  between  an  actor  and  an  officer. 
The  initials  only  of  the  principals  are  given  :  "  Mr. 
H.,  an  actor,  of  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields  Theatre,  fought 


COMPETITION,  AND  WHAT  CAME  OF  IT         325 

Mr.  D.,  an  officer,  at  Barnes  Elms."  Whether  the 
former  was  young  Hodgson  or  young  Harris  is  not 
now  to  be  determined,  nor  the  grounds  of  the  quarrel. 
The  issue  of  it  was  that  the  player  dangerously 
wounded  the  soldier ;  and  it  is  added  that  both 
parties  exhibited  brilliant  courage. 

Cowen  was  the  original  representative  of  Sir  Joshua 
Wittol  ("  Old  Bachelor"),  Jeremy  ("Love  for  Love  "), 
and  Foigard  ("  Beaux'  Stratagem  "). 

Quin  passed  over  to  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields  in  this 
season  of  17 17- 18,  where  he  played  Hotspur,  Tamer- 
lane, Morat  ("  Aurungzebe "),  Mark  Antony,  and 
created  the  part  of  Scipio,  in  the  "  Scipio  Africanus," 
written  by  young  Beckingham,  the  pride  of  Merchant 
Tailors'  School.  Beckingham  must  also  have  been 
the  pride  of  Fleet  Street,  and  especially  of  the  craft 
of  linen-drapers,  of  which  his  father  was  a  worthy 
and  well-to-do  member.  The  piece  was  played  on 
the  1 8th  of  February,  17 18.  The  author  was  then 
but  nineteen  years  of  age,  and  was  full  of  bright 
promise.  A  tragedy  by  one  so  young,  excited  the 
public,  and  most  especially  the  juvenile  public,  at 
Merchant  Tailors',  where  Doctor  Smith  was  head- 
master. The  doctor  and  submasters  held  the  stage 
in  abhorrence  till  now,  when  a  brilliant  alumnus  was 
likely  to  shed  lustre  on  the  corporation  of  "  Merchant 
Tailors  and  Linen  Armorers."  Now  they  proclaimed 
high  jubilee,  gave  the  lads  a  half-holiday  on  the 
author's  night,  and  joyfully  saw  the  whole  school 
swarming  to  the  pit  of  Lincoln's  Inn,  to  uphold  the 
tragedy  by  this  honoured  condiscipulus.  The  mas- 
ters, in  this,  acted  against  their  own  former  precept 
and  example ;  but  they  made  amends  by  a  religious 


3a6  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

zeal,  and  by  expelling  all  the  Jewish  pupils  from  the 
school !  Israel  was  the  scapegoat,  and  the  Christian 
sense  of  propriety  was  gratified. 

But  Quin's  Scipio  established  a  taste  for  theatricals 
at  Merchant  Tailors',  where  classical  plays  were 
acted,  for  some  years,  as  at  Westminster.  Becking- 
ham's  tragedy  exhibits  a  romantic  story,  or  stories, 
in  a  classical  costume.  There  is  severity  enough  to 
gratify  rigid  tastes,  with  a  little  of  overwarmth  of 
action  on  the  part  of  one  of  three  lovers,  which  shows 
that  the  young  poet  was  not  unread  in  the  older 
masters. 

But  there  were  worse  and  better  plays  than 
*•  Scipio "  brought  out  on  the  same  stage  this  sea- 
son. Taverner  failed  in  a  pendant  to  his  "Artful 
Husband,"  the  "Artful  Wife."  Bullock  did  little 
for  the  credit  of  the  stage  by  his  farce  of  the  "  Per- 
jurer," and  Sir  Thomas  Moore  justly  criticised  his 
own  tragedy  of  "  Mangore,  King  of  the  Timbusians," 
when  he  called  it  a  "  trifle."  It  is  a  very  noisy  trifle, 
concerned  with  love,  battle,  murder,  and  worse,  be- 
tween the  Spaniards  and  South  American  Indians. 
Rich  thought  its  bustle  might  carry  its  absurdities 
successfully  through,  and  Sir  Thomas  stimulated  the 
actors,  when  at  rehearsal,  by  inviting  them  to  supper, 
at  which  Leigh,  the  two  Bullocks,  Williams,  Ogden, 
Knapp,  and  Giffard,  Mistresses  Knight,  Bullock,  and 
Kent,  made  a  joyous  party,  as  hilarious  as  the  audi- 
ence was,  whose  laughter  alone  prevented  them  from 
hissing  down  the  nonsense  of  an  obscure  man  who 
was  knighted  for  some  forgotten  service  —  certainly 
not  for  any  rendered  to  the  Muses. 

The  piece  of  this  season  which  had  stuff  in  it  to 


COMPETITION,  AND  WHAT  CAME  OF  IT         327 

cause  it  to  live  to  our  own  times,  was  Mrs.  Centlivre's 
"Bold  Stroke  for  a  Wife."  Sprightly  Mrs.  Cent- 
livre  was  as  fervent  a  Whig  as  Gibber,  and  had 
written  verses  enough  in  praise  of  Brunswick  to 
entitle  her  to  be  poetess  laureate,  had  the  Princess 
Caroline  had  a  voice  in  the  matter,  when  Rowe  died 
this  very  year,  and  Newcastle  recommended  tipsy 
Eusden  for  the  office  of  "  birthday  fibber."  The 
"  Bold  Stroke,"  laughed  at  and  denounced  by  Wilks, 
and  taken  reluctantly  in  hand  by  the  actors,  is  a  fair 
specimen  of  that  lighter  comedy  which  borders  upon 
farce,  but  in  which  that  fun  is  genuine,  and  the 
incidents  not  so  improbable  but  that  they  may  be 
accepted,  or,  by  the  rapidity  of  their  succession, 
laughed  at  and  forgotten. 

This  season,  withal,  was  not  successful.  It  broke 
the  heart  of  Keen,  actor  and  sharer.  In  the  former 
capacity,  though  Savage  thought  his  life  worth  nar- 
rating, he  won  few  laurels,  —  but  his  wreath  was  not 
entirely  leafless.  He  was  loved,  too,  by  his  brethren 
of  both  houses,  whose  subscriptions  defrayed  the 
expenses  of  a  funeral,  at  which  upward  of  two  hun- 
dred persons  walked,  in  deep  mourning. 

At  this  time,  Drury,  with  its  old,  strong  company, 
was  patronised  by  court  and  town.  Plays  acted  at 
Hampton  Court,  before  the  king,  were  repeated 
in  the  public  theatre.  Of  the  former  I  shall  speak 
in  a  future  page.  Two  new  comedies  proved,  indeed, 
inferior  to  Mrs.  Centlivre's  "Bold  Stroke,"  at  the 
other  house,  Charles  Johnson's  "  Masquerade,"  bor- 
rowed a  little  from  Shirley,  and  more  from  Moli^re, 
furnished,  in  Ombre  and  Lady  Frances  Ombre,  some 
ideas,  probably,  to  Cibber,  when  he  placed  a  similar 


3a8  THEIR  MAJESTIES*  SERVANTS 

pair  on  the  stage,  in  Lord  and  Lady  Townley.  A 
worse  piece  was  more  successful,  —  the  rambling 
comedy,  "  Chit  Chat,"  by  a  Mr.  Thomas  Killigrew,  a 
gentleman  who,  like  his  namesake,  had  a  place  at 
court,  but  not  his  namesake's  wit.  The  courtiers, 
with  the  Duke  of  Argyle  at  their  head,  carried  the 
piece  through  eleven  representations,  and  enriched 
the  treasury  by  ;^i,cx)o! 

The  great  effort  of  the  season  was  made  in  bring- 
ing out  "Busiris,"  a  tragedy,  by  the  Reverend  Doc- 
tor Young,  author  of  "  Night  Thoughts."  It  was 
played  on  March  7,  17 19,  by  Booth,  Elrington, 
Wilks,  Mills,  Walker,  and  Thurmond,  Mrs.  Oldfield, 
and  Mrs.  Thurmond. 

"  Busiris "  was  Young's  earliest  tragedy.  It  is 
written  in  a  stilted  and  inflated  style,  and  bears  all 
the  marks  of  a  juvenile  production.  The  plot  of  the 
piece  is  void  of  all  ingenuity ;  but  there  is  little  that 
is  borrowed  in  it,  save  the  haughty  message  sent  by 
Busiris  to  the  Persian  ambassador,  which  is  the 
same  as  that  returned  by  the  Ethiopian  prince  to 
Cambyses,  in  the  third  book  of  Herodotus.  Of  the 
phrasing,  and  indeed  of  the  incidents  of  this  tragedy. 
Fielding  made  excellent  fun,  in  his  mock  tragedy 
of  "Tom  Thumb."  The  sovereigns  and  courtiers 
of  Egypt  gave  little  trouble  to  be  converted  into 
Arthur  and  Dollabella,  Noodle,  Doodle,  the  great 
little  prince,  and  Huncamunca.  The  travesty  is 
rich  and  facile ;  not  least  so  in  that  passage  mimick- 
ing the  various  addresses  to  the  sun,  who  is  bid  to  rise 
no  more  but  hide  his  face  and  put  the  world  in  mourn- 
ing. On  these.  Fielding  remarks  that  "the  author 
of  « Busiris '  is  extremely  anxious  to  prevent  the  sun's 


COMPETITION,  AND  WHAT  CAME  OF  IT         329 

blushing  at  any  indecent  object ;  and,  therefore,  on 
all  such  occasions,  he  addresses  himself  to  the  sun, 
and  desires  him  to  keep  out  of  the  way."  It  was 
dedicated  to  the  Duke  of  Newcastle,  the  patron  of 
Eusden,  the  laureate,  "  because  the  late  instances  he 
had  received  of  his  Grace's  undeserved  and  uncom- 
mon favour,  in  an  affair  of  some  consequence,  foreign 
to  the  theatre,  had  taken  from  him  the  privilege  of 
choosing  a  patron."  If  this  favour  consisted  in  re- 
warding Young  for  writing  for  the  court,  the  favour 
may  have  been  "undeserved,"  but  it  was  by  no 
means  "uncommon," 

The  concluding  incident  of  this  play —  the  double 
suicide  of  Memmon  (Wilks)  and  Mandane  (Mrs,  Old- 
field),  —  found  such  favour  in  the  author's  own  estima- 
tion, that  he  repeated  it  in  his  next  two  tragedies,  in 
each  of  which  a  couple  of  lovers  make  away  with 
themselves.  This  tripled  circumstance  reminds  a 
critic  of  the  remark  of  Dryden :  "  The  dagger  and 
the  bowl  are  always  at  hand  to  butcher  a  hero,  when 
a  poet  wants  the  brains  to  save  him." 

Doctor  Young  was  at  this  time  thirty-eight  years 
of  age,  but  was  not  yet  "famous,"  Born  when 
Charles  II,  was  king  and  Dryden  laureate,  the  Hamp- 
shire godson  of  the  Princess  Anne  was  as  yet  only 
known  as  having  been  the  friend  of  the  Duke  of 
Wharton,  and  of  Tickell ;  as  having  first  come  be- 
fore the  public  in  171 3,  with  a  poem  to  Granville,  in 
which  there  is  good  dramatic  criticism  ;  and  of  having 
since  written  poems  of  promise  rather  than  of  merit, 
the  latest  of  which  was  a  paraphrase  on  part  of  the 
book  of  Job,  which,  curiously  enough,  abounds  with 
phrases  which  show  the  author's  growing  intercourse 


330  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

with  the  playhouse  and  theatrical  people.  "  Busiris  " 
was  written  in  the  year  that  "Cato"  was  played,  but 
its  performance  was  delayed  till  this  year,  and  its 
dramatic  death  occurred  long  before  "  Cato  "  departed 
from  the  stage  —  to  be  read,  at  least,  as  long  as  an 
admirer  of  Addison  survives. 


CHAPTER   XVII. 

THE  PROGRESS  OF  JAMES  QUIN,  AND  DECLINE  OF 
BARTON  BOOTH 

QuiN  made  great  advances  in  the  public  favour  in 
the  season  of  171 8-19,  at  Lincoln's  Inn,  where,  how- 
ever, as  yet,  he  only  shared  the  leading  business  in 
tragedy  and  comedy  with  Ryan,  and  the  less  distin- 
guished Evans.  Southwark  Fair,  a  fashionable  resort, 
contributed  to  the  company  a  new  actor,  Bohemia  or 
Boheme,  with  great  comic  power ;  and  Susan  Mount- 
fort  replaced  for  a  few  weeks  Mrs.  Rogers,  who  had 
held  for  a  time  the  tragic  parts  once  acted  by  Mrs. 
Barry  and  Bracegirdle,  and  who  died  about  this  time. 
Of  Susan  Mountfort's  touching  end  I  will  speak  in  a 
future  page.  Mrs.  Rogers  had  been  on  the  stage 
since  1692,  and  numbered  among  her  original  parts: 
Imoinda,  Oriana,  Melinda,  and  Isabinda,  in  *'  Oro- 
nooko,"  "Inconstant,"  "Recruiting  Officer,"  and 
"  Busy  Body." 

During  this  season  a  French  company  acted  for 
some  time  in  the  Fields,  where  the  "  Tartuffe  "  was 
also  played  against  the  "  Nonjuror."  The  only  nov- 
elty worthy  of  notice  was  the  «  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  " 
of  poor  Doctor  Sevvell,  in  which  Quin  played  the  hero 
with  indifferent  success.  The  author  was  more  re- 
markable than  his  piece.     He  was  of  good  family, 

331 


332  THEIR  MAJESTIES*  SERVANTS 

and  a  pupil  of  Boerhaave ;  but,  unsuccessful  as  a 
practitioner  in  London,  he,  curiously  enough,  gained 
fortune  and  reputation  in  the  smaller  sphere  of  Hamp- 
stead,  until,  as  a  singular  biographical  notice  informs 
us,  "three  other  physicians  settled  at  the  same  place, 
after  which  his  gains  became  very  inconsiderable." 
He  became  a  poor  poet  instead  of  a  rich  physician ; 
"  kept  no  house,  but  was  a  boarder ;  was  much  es- 
teemed, and  so  frequently  invited  to  the  tables  of 
gentlemen  in  the  neighbourhood,  that  he  had  seldom 
occasion  to  dine  at  home."  Seven  years  after  Quin 
failed  to  lift  him  into  dramatic  notoriety,  this  Tory 
opponent  of  the  Whig  Bishop  of  Salisbury,  and  one 
of  the  minor  contributors  (it  is  said)  to  the  Spectator 
and  Tatler,  though  he  is  not  included  in  Bissett's  lives 
of  the  writers  in  the  first-named  periodical,  died,  "  and 
was  supposed,"  says  the  anonymous  biographer  already 
quoted,  *'  at  that  time  to  be  in  very  indigent  circum- 
stances, as  he  was  interred  in  the  meanest  manner,  his 
coffin  being  little  better  than  those  allotted  by  the 
parish  to  their  poor  who  are  buried  from  the  work- 
houses, neither  did  a  single  friend  or  relation  attend 
him  to  the  grave.  No  memorial  was  placed  over  his 
remains;  but  they  lie  just  under  a  holly-tree,  which 
formed  part  of  a  hedgerow,  that  was  once  the  bound- 
ary of  the  churchyard."  Such  was  the  end  of  the 
poet  through  whom  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields  hoped,  in 
17 19,  to  recover  its  ancient  prosperity. 

Eventful  incidents  marked  the  Drury  Lane  season 
of  1719-20.  It  commenced  in  the  middle  of  Sep- 
tember, between  which  time,  and  the  last  week  of  the 
following  January,  things  went  on  prosperously  as 
between  players  and  public,  but  not  so  as  between 


PROGRESS  OF  QUIN,  AND  DECLINE  6F  BOOTH     333 

patentees  and  the  government.  Within  the  period 
mentioned  Miss  Santlow  had  made  Booth  happy,  —  a 
union  which  helped  to  make  Susan  Mountfort  mad, 
—  and  Dennis's  "  Invader  of  His  Country,"  and  South- 
erne's  "  Spartan  Dame,"  were  produced.  The  former 
was  the  second  of  three  adaptations  from  Shake- 
speare's "  Coriolanus."  Forty  years  before,  in  1682, 
Nahum  Tate  fancied  there  was  somethmg  in  the  times 
like  that  depicted  in  the  days  of  Coriolanus.  To  make 
the  parallel  more  striking,  he  pulled  Shakespeare's  play 
to  pieces,  and  out  of  the  fragments  built  up  his  own 
*'  Ingratitude  of  a  Commonwealth."  Nahum  altered 
all  for  the  worse ;  and  he  wrote  a  new  fifth  act, 
which  was  still  worse  than  the  mere  verbal  or  semi- 
alterations.  The  impudence  of  the  destroyer  was 
illustrated  by  his  cool  assurance,  in  the  prologue, 
that  — 

«•  He  only  ventures  to  make  gold  from  ore, 
And  turn  to  money  what  lay  dead  before." 

Tate  was  now  followed  by  Dennis,  who  altered 
•*  Coriolanus  "  for  political  reasons,  brought  it  out  at 
Drury  Lane,  in  the  cause  of  his  country  and  sovereign, 
and  perhaps  thought  to  frighten  the  Pretender  by  it. 
The  failure  was  complete ;  although  Booth  played  the 
principal  male  character,  and  Mrs.  Porter,  Volumnia. 

Southerne's  "  Spartan  Dame  "  had  been  interdicted 
in  the  reign  of  William  and  Mary,  as  it  was  supposed 
that  the  part  of  Celonis  (Mrs.  Oldfield),  wavering  be- 
tween her  duty  to  her  father,  Leonidas,  and  that 
owing  to  her  husband,  Cleombrotus  (Booth),  would 
have  painfully  reminded  some,  and  joyfully  reminded 
other,  of  the  spectators,  of  the  position  of  Mary,  be- 


334  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

tween  her  royal  sire  and  her  princely  consort.  But  it 
would  have  been  as  reasonable  to  prohibit  "  Othello  " 
or  "King  Lear,"  because  of  the  presence  in  them  of 
individuals  so  related.  Southerne's  play  has  no  local 
colour  about  it,  but  abounds  in  anachronisms  and  in- 
congruities, and  it  survived  but  during  a  brief  popu- 
larity. The  author  was  now  sixty  years  of  age, 
Dennis  seven  years  his  senior.  The  older  and  un- 
luckier,  and  less  courteous  poet,  gained  nothing  by 
his  play  to  compensate  for  the  annuity  he  had  pur- 
chased, but  the  term  of  which  he  had  outlived. 
Southerne  gained  ;^500  by  his  "author's  nights" 
alone ;  for  patronage  and  presence  on  which  occa- 
sions, the  plausible  poet  personally  solicited  his 
friends.     For  the  copyright  he  received  an  additional 

;^I20. 

About  six  weeks  after  Southerne's  play  was  pro- 
duced, —  that  is,  after  the  performance  of  the  "  Maid's 
Tragedy,"  January  23,  1720,  an  order  from  the  Duke 
of  Newcastle,  lord  chamberlain,  suddenly  closed  the 
theatre !  The  alleged  cause  was  "  information  of  mis- 
behaviour on  the  part  of  the  players."  The  real  cause 
lay  in  Sir  Richard  Steele,  the  principal  man  who  held 
the  patent ! 

Since  we  last  parted  with  the  knight,  he  had  been 
ungenerously  trying,  in  pamphlets,  to  hunt  to  the 
scaffold  the  last  Tory  ministers  of  Queen  Anne ;  he 
had  lost  his  second  wife ;  he  had  been  projecting  a 
union  of  church  and  kirk ;  he  had  invented  a  means 
of  keeping  fish  alive  while  being  transported  across 
sea;  he  had  been  living  extravagantly;  but  he  had 
also  offended  his  patron,  the  Duke  of  Newcastle,  and 
therewith,   the  king,  whose  servant  the  duke  was, 


PROGRESS  OF  QUIN,  AND  DECLINE  OF  BOOTH     335 

and  the  government,  of  which  the  duke  was  a  mem- 
ber. Steele,  in  fact,  had  vehemently  and  successfully 
opposed,  by  speech  and  pamphlet.  Lord  Sunderland's 
Peerage  Bill,  which  proposed  to  establish  twenty-five 
hereditary  peers  of  Scotland  to  sit  in  the  English 
House  of  Lords,  in  place  of  the  usual  election  of 
sixteen ;  and  to  create  six  new  English  peerages,  with 
the  understanding  that  the  Crown  would  never,  in 
future,  make  a  new  peer  except  on  the  extinction  of 
an  old  family.  Steele  denounced,  in  the  "Plebeian," 
the  aristocratical  tendency  of  the  bill,  and  to  such 
purpose,  that  the  theatre  he  governed  was  closed, 
and  his  name  struck  out  of  the  license ! 

Steele  appealed  to  the  public,  in  a  pamphlet,  the 
"  Theatre ;  "  and  showed,  by  counsel's  opinion,  how  he 
had  been  wronged  ;  he  estimated  his  loss  at  nearly 
y£^ 1 0,000,  and  finally  sank  into  distress;  with  min- 
gled bitterness  and  wit.  His  old  ducal  patron  had 
loudly  proclaimed  he  would  ruin  him.  "  This,"  said 
Steele,  "  from  a  man  in  his  circumstances,  to  one  in 
mine,  is  as  great  as  the  humour  of  Malagina,  in  the 
comedy,  who  valued  himself  for  his  activity  in 
•tripping  up  cripples.'  " 

Dennis  entered  the  lists  against  Sir  Richard ;  but 
the  worst  the  censor  could  say  against  the  knight 
was,  that  he  had  a  dark  complexion,  and  wore  a 
black  peruke.  Dennis  also  attacked  actors  gener- 
ally, as  rogues  and  vagabonds  in  the  eye  of  the  law, 
and  liable  to  be  whipped  at  the  king's  porter's  lodge. 
Such  was  the  testimony  of  this  coarse  cockney,  the 
son  of  a  saddler,  and  a  fellow  who,  for  his  ill-doings, 
had  been  expelled  from  Cambridge  University. 

Booth,  Cibber,  and  Wilks  were   permitted  to  re- 


336  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

open  Drury  under  a  license,  after  an  interval  of  a 
few  days,  and  the  season  thus  recommencing  on  the 
28th  of  January,  with  the  "Careless  Husband," 
Gibber  playing  Lord  Foppington,  ran  on  to  August 
23d,  when  the  house  closed  with  "Bartholomew 
Fair !  "  The  only  novelty  was  Hughes's  "  Siege  of 
Damascus,"  with  false  quantities  in  his  classical 
names,  and  much  heaviness  of  treatment  of  an  apt 
story.  It  was  Hughes's  first  play,  and  he  died  un- 
conscious of  its  success.  He  was  then  but  forty- 
three  years  of  age.  The  old  schoolfellow  of  Isaac 
Watts  had  begun  his  career  by  complimenting  King 
William  and  eulogising  Queen  Anne.  He  had  pub- 
lished clever  translations,  composed  very  gentleman- 
like music,  contributed  to  the  Spectator,  and  obtained 
a  place  among  the  wits.  He  wrote,  in  17 12,  the  words 
of  the  opera  of  "  Calypso  and  Telemachus,"  to  prove 
how  gracefully  the  English  language  might  be  wedded 
to  music.  Two  lord  chancellors  were  among  his 
patrons,  Cowper  and  Macclesfield,  and  that  he  held 
the  secretaryship  to  the  commissioners  of  the  peace 
was  a  pleasant  consequence  thereof.  His  "  Siege 
of  Damascus "  has  for  moral,  that  it  is  wrong  to 
extend  religious  faith  by  means  of  the  sword.  The 
angry  lover  who  left  the  city  he  had  saved,  to  assault 
it  with  the  Arabians,  from  whom  he  had  saved  it, 
and  to  meet  the  lady  of  his  love  full  of  abhorrence 
for  the  traitor,  might  have  produced  some  emotion ; 
but  loving,  loved,  living,  and  dying,  they  all  talk, 
seldom  act,  and  never  touch.  Nevertheless,  Booth, 
Wilks,  Mills,  and  Mrs.  Porter  had  attentive  listeners, 
if  not  ecstatic  auditors,  during  a  run  of  ten  nights. 
The  long  tirades  and  the  ponderous  similes  gratified 


PROGRESS  OF  QUIN,  AND  DECLINE  OF  BOOTH     337 

ihc  same  audiences  who  took  delight  in  Norris's 
Barnaby  Brittle,  Shepherd's  Sir  Tunbelly  Clumsey 
and  Mrs.  Booth's  Helena,  in  the  "  Rover."  Never- 
theless, Hughes  acquired  no  fame.  When  Swift 
received  a  copy  of  his  works,  he  wrote  to  Pope : 
•'  I  never  heard  of  the  man  in  my  life,  yet  I  find 
your  name  as  a  subscriber.  He  is  too  grave  a  poet 
for  me ;  and,  I  think,  among  the  mediocrists  in  prose 
as  well  as  in  verse."  Pope  sanctioned  the  judgment ; 
adding,  that  what  Hughes  wanted  in  genius,  he  made 
up  as  an  honest  man.  Hitherto,  the  great  tragedy 
of  this  century  was  "  Cato." 

At  Lincoln's  Inn,  Quin  played  the  king  to  Ryan's 
Hamlet,  and  created  Henri  Quatre  in  young  Beck- 
ingham's  second,  last,  and  unsuccessful  essay,  "  Henri 
IV.  of  France."  What  was  the  course  of  the  Mer- 
chant Tailors'  pupil,  and  son  of  the  Fleet  Street 
linen-draper,  after  this,  I  am  unable  to  say,  further 
than  that  he  died  in  obscurity  some  ten  years  later. 
A  comedy,  by  "  Handsome  Leigh,"  a  moderately 
fair  actor,  called  "  Kensington  Gardens,  or  the  Pre- 
tenders," showed  some  power  of  drawing  character, 
especially  an  effeminate  footman,  Bardash,  played  by 
Bullock,  but  it  did  nothing  for  a  theatre  which  was 
now  partly  relying  on  subscriptions  in  aid.  At  the 
head  of  the  subscribers  was  the  last  Baron  Brooke, 
whose  more  famous  son,  the  first  Earl  of  Warwick, 
of  the  Fulk  Greville  line,  used  to  subscribe  his 
political  vote  so  singularly  —  first  for  ministers,  then 
for  the  opposition,  and  thirdly,  not  at  all,  in  unde- 
viating  regularity. 

This  piece  failing,  came  Theobald's  adaptation  of 
Shakespeare's  "  Richard  II.,"  very  much  for  the  worse, 


338  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

but  SO  far  to  the  profit  of  the  adapter,  that  the  Earl 
of  Orrery  conferred  on  him  an  unusually  liberal  gift 
for  the  dedication,  namely,  a  hundred-pound  note, 
enclosed  in  a  box  of  Egyptian  pebble,  which  was 
worth  a  score  of  pounds  more.  The  original  author 
was  less  munificently  remunerated,  except  in  abiding 
glory. 

Another  attempt  served  the  house  as  poorly, 
namely,  the  reappearance  of  a  Mrs.  Vandervelt,  not 
because  she  was  a  clever,  but  that  she  was  a  very 
aged,  actress,  eighty-five  years  old,  who  had  not 
played  since  King  Charles's  time,  but  who  had  spirits 
enough  to  act  the  Widow  Rich  in  the  "  Half-Pay 
Officer,"  a  vamped-up  farce,  by  Molloy,  the  political 
writer,  and  strength  enough  to  dance  a  sprightly  jig 
after  it.  As  the  hostess  of  a  tavern  in  Tottenham 
Court  Road,  Peg  Fryer,  as  the  old  dame  was  called 
off  the  stage,  kept  a  merry  and  prosperous  house. 

Another  adaptation  was  Griffin's  comedy,  "Whig 
and  Tory,"  which  had  nothing  political  in  it  but  the 
name ;  and  by  which  that  excellent  low  comedian, 
who  ought  to  have  been  in  the  Church,  and  who 
would  not  be  a  glazier,  did  not  add  to  his  fame. 

The  "  Imperial  Captives "  was  a  more  ambitious 
venture,  by  a  new  author,  Mottley.  It  was  a  tragedy, 
in  which  Quin  played  Genseric,  King  of  the  Vandals, 
and  in  which  there  is  much  love  and  a  little  murder, 
in  the  old  thundering  style,  and  all  at  cross-purposes. 
Distress  made  a  poet  of  Mottley.  His  father  was  a 
Jacobite  colonel,  who  followed  James  to  France ;  his 
mother,  a  thorough  bred  Whig,  who  stayed  under 
William  in  England.  Occasionally,  they  settled  their 
political  differences,  and  met.     Mottley  was  one  of 


PROGRESS  OF  QUIN,  AND  DECLINE  OF  BOOTH     339 

those  men  who  depend  on  patrons.  He  had  lost  a 
post  in  the  excise  office,  and  had  not  gained  either 
of  two  which  had  been  promised  him,  one  in  the 
wine  license  office,  by  Lord  Halifax,  and  one  in 
the  exchequer,  to  which  he  had  been  appointed,  but 
from  which  he  was  immediately  ousted  by  Sir  Robert 
Walpole.  An  estate,  in  which  he  had  a  reversionary 
interest,  was  sold  by  his  widowed  and  extravagant 
mother  to  pay  her  debts ;  and  thus  stripped  of  post 
and  prospects,  Mottley  made  an  essay  as  dramatic 
author,  a  career  in  which  he  was  not  destined  to  be 
distinguished,  although  Queen  Caroline  patronised 
him  during  a  part  of  it  —  so  she  did  Stephen  Duck ! 
"  Cato  "  was  not  superseded  ;  but  Young  was  putting 
the  finishing  stroke  to  his  "  Revenge." 

That  tragedy,  which  has  been  acted  more  fre- 
quently and  more  recently  than  "  Cato,"  was  first 
played  in  the  Drury  Lane  season  of  1720-21.  On 
the  1 8th  of  April,  of  the  latter  year,  Zanga  was 
played  by  Mills,  while  Booth  took  Alonzo,  and  Wilks, 
Carlos.  The  secondary  parts  were  thus  played  by 
the  better  actors.  Mrs.  Porter  played  Leonora ; 
Mrs.  Horton,  Isabella.  This  was  a  fine  cast,  and  the 
piece  was  fairly  successful.  A  story  in  the  Guardian, 
and  two  plays,  by  Marlowe  and  Aphra  Behn,  are  said 
to  have  furnished  Young  with  his  materials,  in  han- 
dling which,  one  of  his  biographers  has  described  him 
as  "  superior  even  to  Shakespeare ! "  The  action 
does  not  flag,  the  situations  are  dramatic,  the  interest 
is  well  sustained,  and  the  language  is  expressive  and 
abounding  in  poetical  beauty.  The  story  of  love, 
jealousy,  and  murder  is,  however,  a  little  marred  by 
the  puling  lines  of  the  black  lago  —  Zanga  —  at  the 


340  THEIR  Majesties'  servants 

close.     Young  obtained  but  ^^50  for  the  copyright 
of  this  piece. 

Young's  •'  Revenge,"  if  built  upon  other  plays,  has 
served  the  turn  of  later  authors.  In  Lord  John 
Russell's  "  Don  Carlos,"  the  reason  given  for  the 
grovelling  Cordoba's  hatred  of  the  Spanish  prince, 
reminds  the  reader  of  that  of  Zanga  for  Alonzo ;  not 
less  in  the  fact  itself,  the  blow  believed  to  be  for- 
gotten, but  in  the  expression.  Any  one,  moreover, 
who  remembers  the  avowal  which  Artabanus  makes 
of  his  guilt  in  the  "  Artaxerxes  "  of  Metastasio,  will 
be  inclined  to  think  that  the  Italian  had  in  his  mind 
the  similar  speech  of  the  Moor  to  his  master. 

Cibber's  comedy,  the  "  Refusal,"  skilfully  built  up 
from  the  "Femmes  Savantes "  of  Moli^re  and  the 
South  Sea  mania,  ran,  like  the  more  famous  tragedy, 
but  six  nights,  a  riot  attending  each  representation, 
and  finally  ending  in  driving  a  good  play  by  the  au- 
thor of  the  *'  Nonjuror  "  from  the  stage.  The  other 
incidents  of  this  season  are  confined  to  the  appear- 
ance of  Cibber's  son,  Theophilus,  who  made  his 
first  essay  in  the  Duke  of  Clarence  in  the  second 
part  of  "  Henry  IV.,"  as  arranged  by  Betterton.  It 
was  a  modest  attempt  on  the  part  of  him  whose 
Pistol  was  to  serve,  down  to  our  day,  as  a  tradition 
to  be  followed.  As  this  vagabond  Theophilus  ap- 
peared, there,  on  the  other  hand,  departed  the  very 
pearl  of  chambermaids,  Mrs.  Saunders,  who  retired 
to  become  the  friend  and  servant  of  Mrs.  Oldfield. 
This  last  lady  played  but  rarely  this  year ;  but  Mrs. 
Horton  profited  by  the  opportunity,  and  Mrs.  Porter, 
as  a  tragic  actress,  drew  the  town. 

Lincoln's   Inn  was,  at  least,  active  in  its  corre- 


PROGRESS  OF  QUIN,  AND  DECLINE  OF  BOOTH     341 

spending  season.  The  progress  of  Quin  is  curiously 
marked.  He  played  Glo'ster  to  the  Lear  of  Boheme ; 
Hector,  in  "Troilus  and  Cressida,"  Ryan  playing 
Troilus ;  the  Duke,  in  "  Measure  for  Measure ;  "  Cori- 
olanus;  Aumerle,  in  "Richard  H. ;"  Aaron,  in  "Ti- 
tus Andronicus  ; "  Leonato  to  Ryan's  Benedick,  etc. 
Moreover,  while  in  the  "  Merry  Wives,"  he  played 
Falstaff  with  great  effect  to  the  Host  of  Bullock,  in 
the  first  part  of  "Henry  IV."  Bullock  played  the 
knight,  and  Quin  the  king.  The  season,  remarkable 
for  Shakespearian  revivals,  creditable  to  Rich,  was 
also  distinguished  for  the  failure  of  the  original  pieces 
produced.  The  "  Chimaera  "  was  a  satire  by  Odell,  • 
a  Buckinghamshire  squire,  pensioned  by  government. 
It  was  aimed  at  the  speculators  in  Change  Alley, 
but  it  smote  them  tenderly.  The  "  Fair  Captive " 
was  an  adaptation  by  Mrs.  Heywood,  a  lady  who 
began  by  writing  as  loosely  as  Aphra  Behn,  con- 
cluded by  writing  as  decorously  as  Mrs.  Chapone ; 
and  left  charge  to  her  executors,  in  1756,  to  give  no 
aid  to  any  biography  of  her  that  might  be  attempted,  on 
the  ground  that  the  least  said  was  the  soonest  mended. 

This  comedy  was  only  succeeded  in  dulness  by 
the  tragedy  which  succeeded  it,  "Antiochus,"  by 
Mottley,  who  could  not  gain  fortune  either  as  poet  or 
placeman.  In  the  play,  Antiochus  is  in  love  with  his 
father's  wife,  Stratonice,  who,  on  being  surrendered 
to  his  son,  by  her  husband,  Seleucus,  is  a  little  over- 
joyed, for  she  loves  the  younger  prince ;  but  she  is 
also  much  shocked,  and  escapes  from  her  embarrass- 
ment by  suicide. 

The  next  novelty  was  a  tragedy  in  one  act,  and 
with  four  characters,  "Fatal  Extravagance,"  attrib- 


34*  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

uted  to  Miller,  the  son  of  a  Scottish  stone-cutter. 
Miller  was  a  sort  of  exaggerated  Richard  Savage; 
inferior  to  him  as  a  poet,  and  in  every  respect  a  more 
inexcusable  vagabond.  He  had  no  redeeming  traits 
of  character,  and  he  destroyed  health  and  fortune 
(both  restored  more  than  once)  as  insanely  as  he  did 
fame  and  the  patience  of  his  friends.  In  "Fatal 
Extravagance,"  Belmour,  played  by  Quin,  kills  a 
creditor  who  holds  his  bond,  of  which  he  also  robs 
the  dead  man;  mixes  a  "cordial,"  administers  it  to 
his  wife  and  three  children  (off  the  stage),  drinks  and 
dies.  The  butchery  is  soon  got  through  in  one  act. 
Miller  subsequently  declared  that  the  piece  was  a  gift 
to  him  from  Aaron  Hill.  That  busy  and  benevolent 
person  had  no  money  to  give  to  a  beggar ;  so  he  sat 
down  and  wrote  a  tragedy  for  him.  It  was  a  piece  of 
clever  extravagance. 

It  was  far  more  amusing  than  Ambrose  Philips's 
tragedy,  the  "Briton,"  which  was  the  sole  novelty 
of  the  Drury  Lane  season  1721-22.  The  tragedy 
lacked  neither  skill,  poetical  spirit,  nor  incident ; 
indeed,  of  love  incidents  there  is  something  too  much. 
But  the  amours  of  Yvor  (Wilks)  and  Gwendolin  (Mrs. 
Booth),  the  infidelities  of  Queen  Cartismund  (Mrs. 
Porter)  to  Vanoc  (Booth),  and  the  intervention  of 
the  Romans  in  these  British  domestic  matters,  inter- 
ested but  for  a  few  nights,  if  then,  an  audience  ill 
read  in  their  own  primitive  history. 

Lincoln's  Inn  Fields  was  scarcely  more  prolific  in 
novelty ;  this,  with  the  exception  of  a  poor  drama, 
the  "  Hibernian  Friend,"  being  confined  to  Sturmy's 
tragedy,  "  Love  and  Duty ; "  Lynceus,  one  of  the 
half-hundred  sons  of  .^gyptus,  by  Quin.      The  love 


PROGRESS  OF  QUIN,  AND  DECLINE  OF  BOOTH     343 

is  that  of  Lynceus  and  his  cousin,  Hypermnestra ; 
the  duty,  that  of  killing  her  husband,  on  the  bridal 
night,  by  command  of  her  father.  The  "  Distressed 
Bride,"  which  is  the  second  name  of  this  piece,  wisely 
disobeys  her  sire,  who  is  ultimately  slain ;  after 
which,  the  young  people,  sole  survivors  of  fifty 
couple  married  yesterday  (the  bridegrooms  all 
brothers;  and  sisters  all  the  brides),  are  made 
happy  by  the  hope  of  long  life  unembittered  by 
feuds  with  their  kinsfolk. 

The  last  two  tragedies  may  be  looked  upon  as  a 
backsliding,  after  "Cato,"  "Jane  Shore,"  and  the 
**  Revenge ; "  and  in  tragedy  there  was  little  im- 
provement for  several  years.  Meanwhile,  Lincoln's 
Inn  Fields  acquired  Walker,  from  Drury  Lane,  and 
Tony  Aston,  an  itinerant  actor,  the  first,  perhaps, 
who  travelled  the  country  with  an  entertainment  in 
which  he  was  the  sole  performer.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  house  lost  pretty  Miss  Stone,  humourous 
Kit  Bullock  (Wilks's  son-in-law),  and  busy  George 
Pack ;  the  last,  the  original  Marplot,  Lissardo,  and 
many  similar  characters.  Pack  turned  vintner  in 
Charing  Cross.  Quin's  ability  was  nightly  more 
appreciated. 

There  was  more  "study"  for  the  Drury  Lane 
actors  in  1722-23.  Mrs.  Centlivre's  muse  died 
calmly  Qut  with  the  comedy  of  the  "Artifice."  In 
the  good  scenes  there  was  an  approach  to  sentimen- 
tal comedy,  more  fully  reached,  in  November,  by 
Steele,  in  his  "Conscious  Lovers,"  in  which  Booth 
played  Young  Bevil,  and  Mrs.  Oldfield  Indiana. 
There  was  not  an  inferior  performer  in  any  of  the 
other  parts  of  this  comedy,  which  Fielding  sneers  at 


344  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

by  making  Parson  Adams  declare  that  there  were 
things  in  it  that  would  do  very  well  in  a  sermon. 
Modern  critics  have  called  this  comedy  dull,  but 
decent ;  perhaps  because  Steele  affected  to  claim  it 
as  at  least  moral  in  its  tendency.  The  truth,  how- 
ever, is,  that  it  is  excessively  indecent.  There  is 
nothing  worse  in  Aphra  Behn  than  the  remarks 
made  to  Cimberton,  the  coxcomb  with  reflection,  on 
Lucinda.  This  top,  played  by  Griffin,  is  for  winning 
a  beauty  by  the  rules  of  metaphysics.  There  is  more 
pathos  than  humour  in  this  comedy ;  the  author  of 
which  had  now  recovered  his  share  in  the  patent,  by 
favour  of  Sir  Robert  Walpole ;  and  it  is  by  directing 
attention  only  to  such  scenes  as  those  between  Bevil 
and  Indiana,  or  between  the  former  and  his  friend 
Myrtle  (Wilks),  that  critics  have  not  correctly  de- 
clared that  the  sentiments  are  those  of  the  most 
refined  morality !  For  the  very  attempt  to  render 
them  so,  even  partially,  Sir  Richard  has  been  sneered 
at,  very  recently,  by  a  writer  who  looks  upon  Steele 
as  a  fool  for  preferring  to  make  Bevil  the  portrait  of 
what  a  man  ought  to  be  rather  than  what  man  really 
was.  The  story  of  the  piece  is  admirably  manipu- 
lated and  reformed  from  the  "Andria"  of  Terence, 
though  Tom  (Gibber)  is  but  a  sorry  Davus. 

On  one  night  of  the  performance  of  this  play,  a 
general  officer  was  observed  in  the  boxes  weeping 
at  the  distresses  of  Indiana.  The  circumstance  was 
noted  to  Wilks,  who,  with  kindly  feeling  ever  ready, 
remarked,  "  I  am  certain  the  officer  will  fight  none 
the  worse  for  it !  "  Steele  must  have  had  more  than 
ordinary  power,  if  he  could  draw  tears  from  martial 
eyes  in  those  days. 


PROGRESS  OF  QUIN,  AND  DECLINE  OF  BOOTH     345 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  Pope  set  the  author, 
as  a  writer,  below  Crowne ;  and  yet,  in  the  following 
lines,  where  the  two  are  mentioned,  there  is  no  very 
complimentary  allusion  to  Sir  Richard  : 

♦»  When  simple  Macer,  now  of  high  renown, 
First  sought  a  poet's  fortune  in  the  town, 
'Twas  all  th'  ambition  his  high  soul  could  feel. 
To  wear  red  stockings  and  to  dine  with  Steele. 
Some  ends  of  verse  his  better  might  afford. 
And  gave  the  harmless  fellow  a  good  word  : 
Set  up  with  these,  he  ventured  on  the  town. 
And  with  a  borrowed  play  outdid  poor  Crowne. 
There  he  stopped  short,  nor  since  has  writ  a  tittle, 
But  has  the  wit  to  make  the  most  of  little." 

Crowne,  at  least,  found  something  of  an  imitator 
in  Ambrose  Philips,  whose  tragedy,  "  Humphrey, 
Duke  of  Gloucester "  (Duke,  Booth  ;  Beaufort,  Gib- 
ber ;  Margaret,  Mrs.  Oldfield  ;  Duchess  of  Gloucester, 
Mrs.  Porter),  was  produced  in  this  season.  It  was 
the  last  and  worst  of  Philips's  three  dramatic  essays. 
The  insipid  additions  in  the  scene  of  Beaufort's  death 
are  justly  described  by  Genest  as  being  in  Crowne's 
vapid  and  senseless  fashion  ;  and  the  public  would 
not  accept  this  cold,  declamatory,  conversational  play 
as  a  substitute  for  the  varied  incidents  which  go  to 
the  making  up  of  the  second  part  of  Shakespeare's 
«  Henry  VI.*' 

Even  in  Doctor  Johnson's  time,  "it  was  only 
remembered  by  its  title;"  we  may,  therefore,  here 
take  leave  of  the  old  secretary  of  the  Hanover  Club, 
who  found  more  fortune  in  place  and  pension  in 
Ireland,  than  he  could  derive  from  poetry  and  play- 
writing  in  England.     To  the  latter  coimtry  he  re- 


346  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

turned  in  1748,  to  "enjoy  himself,"  in  pursuit  of 
which  end  he  died  the  following  year.  Addison  once 
thought  him  well  enough  provided  for,  by  being  made 
a  Westminster  justice.  •'  Nay,"  said  Ambrose,  like  a 
virtuous  man  in  comedy,  "  though  poetry  be  a  trade 
I  cannot  live  by,  yet  I  scorn  to  owe  subsistence  to 
another  which  I  ought  not  to  live  by ; "  and  he  nobly 
gave  up  the  justiceship,  —  as  soon  as  he  was  other- 
wise provided  for ! 

Philips  was  followed  by  an  inferior  author,  but  a 
greater  man.  Sir  Hildebrand  Jacobs,  with  a  classical 
tragedy,  "  Fatal  Constancy,"  in  which  all  the  unities 
are  preserved ;  but  that  did  not  bring  it  the  nearer  to 
"  Cato." 

Then  followed,  in  the  summer  and  less  fashionable 
portion  of  the  season.  Savage's  tragedy,  "  Sir  Thomas 
Overbury,"  in  which  the  author  played  very  indiffer- 
ently the  hero.  At  this  time  the  hapless  young 
man  was  not  widely  known,  except  to  those  friends 
on  whose  charity  he  lived  while  he  abused  it.  Fa- 
voured by  Wilks  and  patronised  by  Theophilus  Gib- 
ber, the  ragged,  rakish  fellow  slunk  at  nights  into 
the  theatre,  and  by  day  lounged  where  he  could,  com- 
posing his  tragedy  on  scraps  of  paper.  In  producing 
it,  ever  ready  Aaron  Hill  assisted  him ;  and  his 
profits,  amounting  to  about  ;^20O,  gave  him  a  tem- 
porary appearance  of  respectability.  Savage  is  said 
to  have  been  deeply  ashamed  of  having  turned  actor; 
but  it  seems  to  me  that  he  was  only  ashamed  of 
having  failed.  He  had  neither  voice,  figure,  nor 
any  other  qualification  for  such  a  profession.  The 
tragedy  lived  but  three  days.  There  is  something 
adroit  in  the  conduct  of  the  plot,  and  evidence  of  cor- 


PROGRESS  OF  QUIN,  AND  DECLINE  OF  BOOTH     347 

rectness  of  conjecture  as  to  the  truth  of  the  relations 
between  Overbury  and  Lady  Somerset,  —  but  there 
was  no  vitality  therewith ;  and  the  poet  gained  no 
lasting  fame  by  the  effort. 

Mrs.  Heywood  followed  Savage's  example,  in  act- 
ing in  her  own  comedy,  "  A  Wife  to  Be  Let ; "  but 
as  this  and  other  original  pieces  or  adaptations  passed 
away  unheeded  or  disgraced,  I  may  here  conclude  my 
notice  of  this  season,  by  recording  the  death  of  Mrs. 
Bicknell,  a  woman,  or  rather  an  actress  of  merit,  and 
the  original  representative  of  Cherry,  in  the  "  Beaux' 
Stratagem." 

Against  Drury,  the  house  in  the  Fields  long 
struggled  in  vain.  Audiences,  of  five  or  six  pounds 
in  value,  discouraged  the  actors.  Egleton  was  not 
equal  to  Gibber;  yet  the  "Baron,"  as  he  was  called 
from  having  assumed  the  title,  when  squandering  his 
little  patrimony  in  France,  was  next  to  Colley  in 
fops.  Quin,  Ryan,  and  Boheme,  could  not  attract  like 
Booth,  Wilks,  and  Gibber  ;  and  Hippisley  and  others, 
acting  "Julius  Gaesar,"  as  a  comic  piece,  was  not  a 
happy  idea.  Not  more  so  was  that  of  turning  the 
story  of  "  Gartouche,"  who  had  recently  been  broken 
on  the  wheel,  into  a  farce.  The  company  lost  their 
best  actress,  too,  in  Mrs.  Seymour,  whom  Boheme 
married  and  took  off  the  stage,  to  Ryan's  great 
regret,  as  she  acted  admirably  up  to  him.  A  prom- 
ising young  actor,  too,  was  lost  to  the  troupe,  in  young 
Rackstraw.  In  the  summer  vacation  he  was  playing 
Darius,  in  a  booth  in  Moorfields,  —  no  derogation  in 
those  days.  In  the  scene  in  which  he  is  attacked  by 
Bessus  and  Nabarzanes,  one  of  the  latter  two  thrust 
his  foil  at  the  king  so  awkwardly,  that  it  entered  the 


348  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

eye,  pierced  the  brain,  and  laid  the  actor,  after  a 
scream,  dead  upon  the  boards  ! 

With  this  season,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  the  fortune 
of  Lincoln's  Inn  mended  —  thanks  to  the  imperti- 
nence of  Colley  Gibber.  To  the  latter,  a  tragedy  had 
been  presented  by  a  modest  gentleman,  of  a  good  old 
Staffordshire  family,  named  Fenton.  He  was  forty 
years  of  age  at  this  time.  Gibber  knew  his  antece- 
dents; that  his  Jacobite  principles  had  been  an  ob- 
stacle to  his  ordination,  for  which  he  was  well 
qualified,  and  that  although  he  had  been  secretary 
and  tutor  in  the  family  of  Lord  Orrery,  Fenton  had 
also  earned  his  bread  in  the  humble  but  honourable 
capacity  of  usher  in  a  boarding-school.  Golley  read 
the  tragedy,  "  Mariamne,"  and  after  keeping  it  un- 
necessarily long,  he  returned  it,  with  the  advice  that 
Fenton  should  stick  to  some  honest  calling,  and 
cease  to  woo  the  Muses.  Elijah  Fenton,  however, 
had  friends  who  enabled  him  now  to  live  inde- 
pendently of  labour,  and  by  their  counsel  he  took 
*'  Mariamne "  to  Rich,  who  immediately  brought  it 
out,  with  Quin  as  Sohemus,  Boheme  as  Herod,  and 
Mrs.  Seymour  as  Mariamne  —  her  one  great  crea- 
tion. 

Boheme,  in  Herod,  played  well  up  to  the  Mariamne 
of  Mrs.  Seymour;  but  he  could  not  approach  Mon- 
dory  in  that  character,  in  the  French  play  by  Tristan. 
Mondory  used  to  have  his  audience,  on  this  occasion, 
departing  from  him  depressed,  silent,  wrapped  in 
meditation.  He  surrendered  himself  entirely  to  the 
part,  and  died  of  the  consequences  of  his  efforts. 
Herod  was  as  truly  the  name  of  the  malady  to  which 
he  succumbed,  as  Orestes  was  of  that  which  killed 


PROGRESS  OF  QUIN,  AND  DECLINE  OF  BOOTH     349 

Montfleury,  as  he  was  playing  Oreste,  in  Racine's 
tragedy  of  "  Andromaque." 

The  old  story  of  Herod  and  Mariamne  is  so  simple 
and  natural,  that  it  appeals  to  every  heart,  in  every 
age.  Fenton  perilled  it  by  additions  ;  but  the  tragedy 
won  a  triumph,  and  the  poet  to  whom  Pope  paid 
about  ;^250  for  translating  four  books  of  the  Odys- 
sey  for  him,  netted  four  times  that  sum  by  this  drama. 
He  became  famous,  and  critics  did  not  note  the 
false  quantity  which  the  Cambridge  man  gave  to 
the  penultimate  of  Salome.  Fenton  was  rendered 
supremely  happy,  but  his  dramatic  fame  rests  on 
this  piece  alone.  He  never  wooed  Melpomene  again, 
but  lived  calmly  the  brief  seven  years  of  life  which 
followed  his  success.  Like  Prior  dying  at  Wimpole, 
the  honoured  guest  of  Harley,  Fenton  died  at  East- 
hampstead,  the  equally  esteemed  guest  of  Sir  William 
Trumbull,  son  of  King  William's  secretary  of  state. 
In  Pope's  well-known  epitaph,  Fenton's  character  is 
beautifully  described  in  a  few  simple  lines. 

Aaron  Hill  was  the  exact  opposite  of  quiet  Fenton. 
His  beech-nut  oil  company  having  failed,  he  joined 
Sir  Robert  Montgomery  in  a  project  for  colonising 
South  Carolina ;  and  this,  too,  proving  unproductive, 
he  turned  to  the  stage,  and  brought  out,  in  the 
season  of  1723-24,  at  Drury  Lane,  his  tragedy  of 
"Henry  V." — an  "improvement"  of  Shakespeare's 
historical  play  of  the  same  name.  Hill's  additions 
comprise  a  Harriet  (Mrs.  Thurmond),  for  whom  he 
invented  a  breeches  part  and  some  melodramatic  sit- 
uations —  especially  between  her  and  Henry  (Booth). 
Hill  cut  out  all  Shakespeare's  comic  characters ;  but 
he  was  so  anxious  for  the  success  of  the  piece,  that 


350  THEIR  MAJESTIES*  SERVANTS 

he  spent  jC200  of  his  own  on  the  scenery,  of  which 
he  made  a  present  to  the  managers ;  after  all,  his 
play  failed,  despite  the  brilliant  Katherine  of  Mrs. 
Oldfield,  and  the  Dauphin  of  Wilks. 

More  successful  was  the  "  Captives,"  by  Gay. 
The  ex-mercer  was  now  a  poet,  whom  the  "  quality  " 
petted;  but  he  was  not  yet  at  the  summit  of  his 
fame.  The  "Captives"  did  not  help  to  raise  him. 
The  story  was  found  unnatural,  and  the  style  stilted. 
A  Persian  captive  (Booth)  is  a  Joseph,  against  whom 
the  Median  queen,  whom  he  has  offended,  vows  ven- 
geance ;  in  pursuit  of  which,  love  and  murder  are 
extensively  employed.  Mrs.  Oldfield  had  one  good 
scene  in  it  as  Cydene,  captive  wife  of  the  Persian 
Joseph,  for  whom  she  entertains  a  warm  regard,  of 
which  he  is  worthy ;  yet  these  actors,  well  seconded, 
could  only  drag  the  tragedy  through  seven  represen- 
tations, before  it  was  consigned  to  oblivion.  But  the 
company  was  strong  enough  to  make  their  old  reper- 
tory, with  Shakespeare  in  the  van,  attractive ;  and 
they  had  nothing  to  regret,  when  the  season  closed, 
but  the  death  of  Pinkethman,  who  for  two  and 
thirty  years,  and  chiefly  at  Drury  Lane,  had  been 
the  most  irresistible  laughter-compeller  of  that  stage, 
on  which  he  had  originated  Beau  Clincher,  Old  Mira- 
bel, and  a  score  of  similar  merry  characters. 

The  company  had  not  to  complain  :  yet  the  mana- 
gers had  found  it  necessary  to  support  their  stock- 
pieces  by  a  novelty  —  a  ballet-pantomime,  "The 
Necromancer,"  by  the  younger  Thurmond,  a  dancing- 
master.  Rich,  at  Lincoln's  Inn,  where  "  Edwin " 
could  not  have  drawn  a  shilling ;  where  Belisarius 
(Boheme)  begged   an  obolus  in  vain ;  and   Hurst's 


PROGRESS  OF  QUIN,  AND  DECLINE  OF  BOOTH     351 

"  Roman  Maid  "  (Paulina,  Mrs.  Moffat)  represented  a 
hermit  as  dwelling  in  a  lone  cave,  near  the  Mount 
Aventine  —  a  hermit  would  be  as  likely  to  be  found 
in  a  wood  on  Snow  Hill  —  Rich,  I  say,  improved  on 
Thurmond's  idea,  by  producing  on  the  20th  of  De- 
cember, 1723,  "The  Necromancer,  or  the  History  of 
Doctor  Faustus,"  and  thereby  founded  pantomime, 
as  it  has  been  established  among  us,  at  least  during 
the  Christmas-tide,  for  now  a  hundred  and  forty 
years. 

Rich,  with  his  "Necromancer,"  conjured  all  the 
town  within  the  ring  of  his  little  theatre.  The  splen- 
dour of  the  scenes,  the  vastness  of  the  machinery, 
and  the  grace  and  ability  of  Rich  himself,  raised  har- 
lequinade above  Shakespeare,  and  all  other  poets ; 
and  Quin  and  Ryan  were  accounted  little  of  in 
comparison  with  the  motley  hero.  The  pantomime 
stood  prominently  in  the  bills ;  during  the  nights  of 
its  attraction  the  prices  of  admission  were  raised  by 
one-fourth,  and  the  weekly  receipts  advanced  from 
six  hundred  (if  the  house  was  full  every  night,  which 
had  been  a  rare  case  in  the  Fields)  to  a  thousand 
pounds.  The  advanced  price  displeased  the  public, 
with  whom  ultimately  a  compromise  was  made,  and 
a  portion  returned  to  those  who  chose  to  leave  the 
house  before  the  pantomime  commenced. 

While  the  drama  was  thus  yielding  to  the  attrac- 
tions of  pantomime,  a  new  theatre  invited  the  public. 
The  little  theatre  in  the  Haymarket  opened  its 
doors  for  the  first  time  on  the  12th  of  September, 
1723,  with  the  "French  Fop,"  of  which  the  author, 
Sandford,  says,  that  he  wrote  it  in  a  few  weeks, 
when  he  was  but  fifteen  years  of  age.     That   may 


352  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

account  for  its  having  straightway  died  ;  but  it  served 
to  introduce  to  the  stage  the  utility  actor,  Milward. 
The  theatre  was  only  open  for  a  few  nights. 

Of  the  season  1724-25,  at  Drury  Lane,  there  is 
little  to  be  said,  save  that  the  inimitable  company 
worked  well  and  profitably  in  sterling  old  plays. 
Wilks  returned  to  Sir  Harry  Wildair,  and  the  public 
laughed  at  Gibber's  quivering  tragedy  tones,  when 
playing  Achonus,  in  his  adaptation  from  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher's  "False  One."  In  "  Caesar  in  Egypt," 
Antony  and  Cleopatra  were  played  by  Wilks  and 
Mrs.  Oldfield,  who  were  never  more  happy  than  when 
making  love  on  the  stage.  This  was  the  sole  novelty 
of  the  season. 

In  the  Fields  there  was  more  of  it,  but  that  most 
relied  on  was  Rich's  "  Harlequin  Sorcerer,"  produced 
on  the  2ist  of  January,  1725.  The  "Bath  Un- 
masked "  was  the  only  original  comedy  produced. 
It  describes  Bath  as  made  up  of  very  unprincipled 
people,  with  a  good  lord  to  about  a  score  of  knaves 
and  hussies.  It  was  the  first  and  not  lucky  essay  of 
miserable  Gabriel  Odingsell,  who,  nine  years  later,  in 
a  fit  of  madness,  hung  himself  in  his  house.  Thatched 
Court,  Westminster. 

Booth  was  more  brilliant  than  he  had  ever  yet 
been,  in  the  Drury  Lane  season  of  1725-26.  In 
Shakespeare  he  shone  conspicuously,  and  his  Hot- 
spur, to  the  Prince  of  Wales  of  Giffard,  from  Dublin, 
charmed  as  much  by  its  chivalry  as  Cato  did  by  its 
dignity.  Mrs.  Oldfield  enjoyed,  and  Mrs.  Cibber, 
first  wife  of  Theophilus,  claimed  the  favour  of  the 
town  ;  and  the  elder  Cibber  surrendered  one  or  two 
old  characters  to  a  younger  actor,  Bridgewater.   Amid 


PROGRESS  OF  QUIN,  AND  DECLINE  OF  BOOTH     353 

'  a  succession  of  old  dramas,  one  novelty  only  was  of- 
fered, a  translation  of  the  "  Hecuba "  of  Euripides, 
with  slight  variations.  The  author  was  Richard 
West,  son-in-law  of  Bishop  Burnet,  and  father  of 
young  West,  the  early  friend  of  Walpole  and  Gray, 
His  play  was  acted  on  the  3d  of  February,  1726,  at 
which  time  West  was  Lord  Chancellor  of  Ireland. 
On  the  first  night  a  full  audience  would  not  listen  to 
the  piece,  and  on  the  next  two  nights  there  was 
scarcely  an  audience  assembled  to  listen.  Neither 
Booth  as  Polymnestor,  nor  Mrs.  Porter  as  Hecuba, 
could  win  the  general  ear.  It  did  not  succeed,  wrote 
the  author,  "  because  it  was  not  heard.  A  rout  of 
Vandals  in  the  galleries  intimidated  the  young  ac- 
tresses, disturbed  the  audience,  and  prevented  all 
attention  ;  and,  I  believe,  if  the  verses  had  been  re- 
peated in  the  original  Greek,  they  would  have  been 
understood  and  received  in  the  same  manner."  The 
young  actresses  were  Mrs.  Brett  and  Mrs.  Gibber ; 
the  latter  was  not  the  famous  lady  of  that  name, 
destined  to  the  highest  walks  of  tragedy.  Lord 
Chancellor  West  died  in  December  of  this  year. 

The  above  single  play  was,  however,  worth  all  the 
novelties  produced  by  Rich  at  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields. 
These  were  comedies  of  a  farcical  kind.  In  one  of 
them,  the  "  Capricious  Lovers,"  by  Odingsell,  there 
was  an  original  character,  Mrs.  Mincemode  (Mrs, 
Bullock),  who  "grew  sick  at  the  sight  of  a  man,  and 
refines,  upon  the  significancy  of  phrases,  till  she  re- 
solves common  observations  into  indecency."  In  the 
"  French  Fortune-Teller,"  the  public  failed  to  be 
regaled  with  a  piece  stolen  from  Ravenscroft,  who 
had  stolen  his  from  the  French.     The  third  play  was 


354  THEIR  AUJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

"  Money's  the  Mistress,"  which  the  audience  damned 
in  spite  of  the  reputation  of  Southerne,  who,  with 
this  failure,  closed  a  dramatic  career  which  had  com- 
menced half  a  century  earlier.  In  its  course  he  had 
written  ten  plays,  the  author  of  which  had  this  in 
common  with  Shakespeare,  —  that  he  was  born  at 
Stratford-on-Avon. 

With  this  year,  1726-27,  came  the  first  symptom 
of  a  "break-up"  in  the  hitherto  prosperous  condition 
of  Drury  Lane.  It  occurred  in  the  first  long  and 
serious  illness  of  Booth,  which  kept  him  from  the 
theatre,  three  long  and  weary  months  to  the  town. 
The  season  at  Drury  Lane,  however,  and  that  at 
Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  had  this  alike,  that  after  Booth's 
welcome  return,  all  London  was  excited  by  expecta- 
tions raised  by  comedies  whose  authors  were  "  gentle- 
men," in  whose  success  the  "quality,"  generally, 
were  especially  interested.  At  Drury  it  was  the 
"  Rival  Modes,"  by  Moore  Smyth ;  at  Lincoln's  Inn 
Fields,  the  "  Dissembled  Wanton,  or,  My  Son,  Get 
Money,"  by  Leonard  Welsted.  In  the  former  piece 
there  is  a  gay  lover,  Bellamine  (Wilks),  wooing  the 
grave  Melissa  (Mrs.  Porter),  while  the  serious  Sagely 
(Mills)  pays  suit  to  the  sprightly  widow  Amoret  (Mrs. 
Oldfield).  An  old  beau  of  King  William's  time, 
Earl  of  Late  Airs  (Cibber),  brings  his  son  to  town 
(Lord  Toupet,  a  modem  beau,  by  Theophilus  Cibber), 
in  order  that  he  may  marry  Melissa,  with  her  father's 
consent.  Amoret  contrives  to  upset  this  arrange- 
ment, and  the  other  lovers  are  duly  united.  The 
plot  was  good,  the  players  unsurpassable,  the  two 
Gibbers  fooling  it  to  the  top  of  their  bent,  and 
old  ^nd  new  fashions  were   pleasantly   contrasted; 


PROGRESS  OF  QUlN,  AND  DECLINE  OF  BOOTH     355 

but  the  action  was  languid,  and  the  piece  was 
hissed. 

The  incident  lacking  here,  abounded  in  Welsted's 
intriguing  comedy,  the  "Dissembled  Wanton,"  a 
character  finely  acted  by  Mrs.  Younger,  —  whose 
marriage  with  Beaufort  (Walker)  being  forbidden  by 
her  father,  Lord  Severne  (Quin),  by  whom  she  had 
been  sent  to  France,  she  reappears  in  her  father's 
presence  as  Sir  Harry  Truelove,  whose  real  character 
is  known  only  to  Emilia  (Mrs.  Bullock),  Lord  Sev- 
erne's  ward.  Emilia's  intimacy  with  Sir  Harry 
causes  the  rupture  of  her  marriage  with  Colonel 
Severne,  and  some  coarse  scenes  have  to  be  got 
through  before  all  is  explained  ;  the  respective  lovers 
are  united,  and  Humphrey  Staple  (Hall)  finds  it 
useless  to  urge  his  son  Toby  (W.  Bullock)  to  get 
money  by  espousing  the  rich  ward  Emilia. 

Although  Welsted's  comedy  was  lively,  it  was 
found  to  be  ill-written.  He  had  had  time  enough  to 
polish  it,  for  ten  years  previous  to  its  production 
Steele  had  commended  the  plot,  the  moral,  and  the 
style  ;  he  had  even  praised  its  decency.  Like  Moore 
Smyth's,  it  could  not  win  the  town.  The  respective 
authors,  who  made  so  much  ineffectual  noise  in  their 
own  day,  would  be  unknown  to  us  in  this,  but  for  the 
censure  of  Pope.  In  the  "  Dunciad "  they  enjoy 
notoriety  with  Theobald,  or  Cibber,  Gildon,  Dennis, 
Centlivre,  and  Aaron  Hill.  Moore  was  an  Oxford 
man,  who  assumed  his  maternal  grandfather's  name, 
being  his  heir,  —  and  held  one  or  two  lucrative  posts 
under  government.  His  father,  the  famous  Arthur 
Moore,  a  wit,  a  politician,  and  a  statesman,  who  was 
long  M.  P.  for  Grimsby,  had  risen,  by  force  of  his 


35^  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

talents,  to  an  eminent  position,  from  a  humble  station. 
Pope  stooped  to  call  Moore  Smyth  the  son  of  a  foot- 
man, and,  when  the  latter  name  was  assumed  on  his 
taking  his  maternal  grandfather's  estates,  the  Whigs 
lampooned  him  as  born  at  "the  paternal  seat  of 
his  family  —  the  tap>-house  of  the  prison-gate,  at 
Monaghan." 

Moore  was  on  intimate  terms  with  the  Mapledur- 
ham  ladies,  the  Blounts,  and  with  others  of  Pope's 
friends,  as  well  as  with  Pope  himself.  Some  tags  of 
the  poet's  lines  he  had  introduced  into  his  unlucky 
comedy,  and  on  this  Pope  supported  a  grossly  ex- 
pressed and  weakly  founded  charge  of  plagiarism. 
Welsted,  who  was  of  a  good  Leicestershire  family, 
and  of  fair  abilities,  had  moved  Pope's  wrath  by  writ- 
ing satirical  verses  against  him,  and  the  feeling  was 
embittered  when  the  two  dramatists  united  in  address- 
ing "  One  Epistle  "  to  Pope,  in  which  they  touched 
him  more  painfully  than  he  c^red  to  confess.  Neither 
Moore  nor  Welsted  ever  tempted  fortune  on  the  stage 
again.  "  Ccestus  artemque  repono,"  said  the  former, 
on  the  title-page  of  his  comedy,  as  if  he  was  reveng- 
ing  himself  on  society.  Welsted  confined  himself, 
after  some  skirmishing  with  his  critics,  to  his  duties 
in  the  ordnance  office.  His  wives  were  women  of 
some  mark.  The  first  was  the  daughter  of  Purcell ; 
the  second  the  sister  of  Walker,  the  great  defender 
of  Londonderry. 

A  better  gentleman  than  either,  Philip  Frowde,  — 
scholar,  wit,  poet,  true  man,  friend  of  Addison,  and  a 
friend  to  all,  —  was  praised  by  the  critics  for  his 
"  Fall  of  Saguntum ; "  but  the  public  voice  did  not 
ratify  the  judgment,  though  Ryan,  as  Fabius,  and 


PROGRESS  OF  QUIN,  AND  DECLINE  OF  BOOTH     3^7 

Quin,  as  Eurydamus,  with  Mrs.  Berriman,  as  Can- 
dace,  —  an    Amazonian    queen,    with    nothing   very 
womanly   about    her,  —  exerted   themselves    to   the 
utmost.     One  other  failure  has  to  be  recorded,  — 
"Philip   of  Macedon,"  by  David   Lewis,  the   friend 
of  Pope.     With  a  dull  tragedy,  Pope's  friend  had  no 
more  chance  of  misleading  the  public,  than  his  foes, 
with  weak  comedies.     The  greater  poet's  commenda- 
tion so  little  influenced  that  public,  that  on  the  first 
night,  with  Pope  himself  in  the  house,  the  audience 
was  so  numerically  small,  —  though  Walker,  Ryan, 
Quin,  Mrs.    Berriman,    Mrs.    Younger,    and   others, 
were,   in  their  "habits,"  as  unlike  Macedonians  as 
they  could  well  be,  —  the  managers  deemed  acting 
to  such  a  house  not  profitable,  and  dismissed  it  ac- 
cordingly.     The   author's   final    condemnation   was 
only  postponed  for  a  night  or  two,  when  he  sank, 
never  to  rise  again. 

With  Booth's  failing  health,  and  the  ill-success  of 
novelties  produced  at  either  house,  there  was  a  gloom 
over  theatrical  matters.  But  at  this  very  time  a  sun 
was  rising  from  behind  a  cloud.  In  one  of  the  irreg- 
ular series  of  performances,  held  at  the  little  theatre 
in  the  Haymarket,  in  1726,  there  appeared  a  young 
lady,  in  the  part  of  Monimia,  in  the  "  Orphan,"  and 
subsequently  as  Cherry,  in  the  "  Beaux'  Stratagem." 
She  was  pretty,  clever,  and  eighteen ;  but  she  was 
not  destined  to  become  either  the  tragic  or  the  comic 
queen.  Soon  after,  however,  thanks  to  the  judgment 
of  Rich,  who  gave  her  the  opportunity,  she  was  hailed 
as  the  queen  of  English  song.  She  was  known  as 
Lavinia  Fen  ton,  but  she  was  the  daughter  of  a  naval 
lieutenant,  named   Beswick.     Her  widowed  mother 


SSS  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

had  married  a  coffee-house  keeper  in  Charing  Cross, 
whose  name  of  Fenton  was  assumed  by  his  step- 
daughter. Before  we  shall  hear  of  her  at  Lincoln's 
Inn  Fields,  a  lieutenant  will  be  offering  her  every- 
thing he  possessed,  except  his  name ;  but  Lavinia, 
without  being  as  discreet,  was  even  more  successful 
than  Pamela,  and  died  a  duchess. 

Throughout  the  reign  of  George  I.,  Barton  Booth 
kept  his  position  as  the  first  English  tragedian,  — 
undisturbed  even  by  the  power  of  Quin.  Associated 
with  him  were  comedians,  —  Wilks,  Cibber,  Mrs. 
Oldfield,  Porter,  Horton,  and  others,  who  shed  splen- 
dour on  the  stage,  at  this  period.  The  new  dramatic 
poets  of  that  reign  were  few,  and  not  more  than  one 
of  those  few  can  be  called  distinguished.  The  name 
of  Young  alone  survives  in  the  memory,  and  that  but 
fo"r  one  tragedy,  the  "  Revenge."  Of  comedies,  there 
is  not  one  of  the  reign  of  George  I.  that  is  even  read 
for  its  merits.  It  is  otherwise  with  the  comedies  of 
an  actress  and  dramatist  who  died  in  this  reign,  — 
Susanna  Centlivre;  and  yet  a  contemporary  notice 
of  her  death  simply  states  that,  as  an  actress,  "  having 
a  greater  inclination  to  wear  the  breeches  than  the 
petticoat,  she  struck  into  the  men's  parts ; "  and  that 
the  dramatist  "had  a  small  wen  on  her  left  eyelid, 
which  gave  her  a  masculine  air." 

Eventful  to  both  houses  was  the  season  of  1727-28. 
It  was  the  last  season  of  Booth,  at  Drury  Lane ;  and 
it  was  the  first  of  the  **  Beggar's  Opera,"  at  Lincoln's 
Inn  Fields.  After  thirty  years'  service,  in  the  reigns 
of  William,  Anne,  George  I.,  and  now  in  that  of 
George  II.,  in  which  Garrick  was  to  excel  him,  that 
admirable  actor  was  compelled,  by  shattered  health. 


PROGRESS  OF  QUIN,  AND  DECLINE  OF  BOOTH     359 

to  withdraw.  For  many  nights  he  played  Henry 
VII L,  and  walked  in  the  coronation  scene,  which 
was  tacked  to  various  other  plays,  in  honour  of  the 
accession  of  George  II.,  who,  with  the  royal  family, 
went,  on  the  7th  of  November,  to  witness  Booth 
enact  the  king.  On  the  9th  of  January,  Booth,  after 
a  severe  struggle,  played,  for  the  sixth  and  last  time, 
Julio,  in  the  "  Double  Falsehood ; "  a  play  which 
Theobald  ascribed  to  Shakespeare;  Doctor  Farmer, 
to  Shirley ;  others,  to  Massinger ;  but  which  was 
chiefly  Theobald's  own,  founded  on  a  manuscript 
copy  which,  through  Downes,  the  prompter,  had 
descended  to  him  from  Betterton ;  and  which  served 
Colman,  who  certainly  derived  his  Octavian  from 
Julio. 

The  loss  in  Booth  was,  in  some  degree,  supplied 
by  the  "  profit "  arising  from  a  month's  run  of  a  new 
comedy  by  Vanbrugh  and  Gibber,  —  the  "  Provoked 
Husband ; "  in  which  the  Lord  and  Lady  Townly 
were  played  by  these  incomparable  lovers,  —  Wilks 
and  Mrs.  Oldfield.  Gibber  acted  Sir  Francis  Wrong- 
head,  and  young  Wetherell,  Squire  Richard.  Van- 
brugh was  at  this  time  dead  —  in  1 726,  at  his  house 
in  Whitehall,  of  quinsy.  The  critics  and  enemies  of 
Gibber  were  sadly  at  fault,  on  this  occasion.  Hating 
him  for  his  "Nonjuror,"  they  hissed  all  the  scenes 
of  which  they  supposed  him  to  be  the  author,  and  ap- 
plauded those  which  they  were  sure  were  by  Van- 
brugh. Gibber  published  the  imperfect  play  left  by 
Sir  John,  and  thereby  showed  that  his  adversaries 
condemned  and  approved  exactly  in  the  wrong  places. 

Gibber  enjoyed  another  triumph  this  season. 
Steele,  abandoning  the  responsibilities  of  manage- 


360  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

ment,  to  follow  his  pleasure,  had  submitted  to  a 
deduction  of  £,\  13J.  4</.,  nightly,  to  each  of  his 
partners,  for  performing  his  duties.  Steele  was  at 
this  time  in  Wales,  dying,  though  he  survived  till 
September,  1729.  His  creditors,  meanwhile,  claimed 
the  "  five  marks  "  as  their  own,  and  the  case  went 
into  the  Rolls  Court,  before  Sir  Joseph  Jekyll. 
Gibber  pleaded  in  person  the  cause  of  himself  and 
active  partners,  and  so  convincingly,  that  he  obtained 
a  decree  in  their  favour. 

In  presence  of  this  new  audience,  the  old  actor 
confesses  he  felt  fear.  He  carried  with  him  the 
heads  of  what  he  was  about  to  urge  ;  but,  says  Colley, 
••  when  it  came  to  the  critical  moment,  the  dread  and 
apprehension  of  what  I  had  undertaken  so  discon- 
certed my  courage,  that  though  I  had  been  used  to 
talk  to  above  fifty  thousand  people  every  winter,  for 
upwards  of  thirty  years  together,  an  involuntary  and 
unexpected  proof  of  confusion  fell  from  my  eyes ; 
and  as  I  found  myself  quite  out  of  my  element,  I 
seemed  rather  gasping  for  life,  than  in  a  condition  to 
cope  with  the  eminent  orators  against  me."  Gibber, 
however,  recovered  himself,  and  vanquished  his  ad- 
versaries, though  two  of  them  were  of  the  stuff  that 
won  for  them,  subsequently,  the  dignity  of  lord 
chancellor. 

The  "Beggar's  Opera"  season  at  Lincoln's  Inn 
Fields  was  the  most  profitable  ever  known  there. 
Swift's  idea  of  a  Newgate  pastoral  was  adopted  by 
Gay,  who,  smarting  under  disappointment  of  prefer- 
ment at  court,  and  angry  at  the  offer  to  make  him 
gentleman-usher  to  the  youngest  of  the  royal  children, 
indulged  his  satirical  humour  against  ministers  and 


PROGRESS  OF  QUIN,  AND  DECLINE  OF  BOOTH     361 

placemen,  by  writing  a  Newgate  comedy,  at  which 
Swift  and  Pope  shook  their  heads,  and  old  Congreve, 
for  one  of  whose  three  sinecures  Gay  would  have 
given  his  ears,  was  sorely  perplexed  as  to  whether  it 
would  bring  triumph  or  calamity  to  its  author.  The 
songs  were  added,  but  Gibber,  as  doubtful  as  Gon- 
greve,  declined  what  Rich  eagerly  accepted,  and  the 
success  of  which  was  first  discerned  by  the  Duke  of 
Argyle,  from  his  box  on  the  stage,  who  looked  at 
the  house,  and  "  saw  it  in  the  eyes  of  them." 

Walker,  who  had  been  playing  tragic  parts,  and 
very  recently  Macbeth,  was  chosen  for  Macheath,  on 
Quia  declining  the  highwayman.  Lavinia  Fenton 
was  Polly ;  Peacham,  by  Hippisley  ;  and  Spiller  made 
a  distinctive  character  of  Mat  o'  the  Mint.  Walker 
"  knew  no  more  of  music  than  barely  singing  in  tune ; 
but  then  his  singing  was  supported  by  his  inimitable 
action,  by  his  speaking  to  the  eye  and  charming  the 
ear."  It  was  at  the  close  of  a  long  run  of  the  piece 
that  Walker  once  tripped  in  his  words.  "  I  wonder," 
said  Rich,  "that  you  should  forget  the  words  of  a 
part  you  have  played  so  often ! "  "  Do  you  think," 
asked  Walker,  with  happy  equivocation,  "  that  a  man's 
memory  is  to  last  for  ever  ? " 

Sixty-two  nights  in  this  season  the  "  Beggar's 
Opera"  drew  crowded  houses.  Highwaymen  grew 
fashionable,  and  ladies  not  only  carried  fans  adorned 
with  subjects  from  the  opera,  but  sang  the  lighter, 
and  hummed  the  coarser,  songs.  Sir  Robert  Walpole, 
who  was  present  on  the  first  night,  finding  the  eyes 
of  the  audience  turned  on  him  as  Locket  was  singing 
his  song  touching  courtiers  and  bribes,  was  the  first 
to  blunt  the  point  of  the  satire,  by  calling  encore. 


362  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

Swift  says,  "two  great  ministers  were  in  a  box 
together,  and  all  the  world  staring  at  them."  At 
this  time  it  was  said  that  the  quarrel  of  Peacham 
and  Locket  was  an  imitation  of  that  of  Brutus  and 
Cassius,  but  the  public  discerned  therein  Walpole 
and  his  great  adversary,  Townshend. 

"'The  Beggar's  Opera'  hath  knocked  down  Gulli- 
ver," wrote  Swift  to  Gay.  "I  hope  to  see  Pope's 
•  Dulness  '  "  (the  first  name  of  the  "  Dunciad  ")  "  knock 
down  the  *  Beggar's  Opera,'  but  not  till  it  hath  fully 
done  its  job."  But  Gay  had  no  "mission  ;  "  he  only 
sought  to  gratify  himself  and  the  town ;  to  satirise, 
not  to  teach  or  to  warn;  the  "opera"  made  "Gay 
rich,  and  Rich  gay ; "  the  former  sufficiently  so  to 
make  him  forego  earning  a  fee  of  twenty  guineas  by 
a  dedication,  and  the  latter  only  so  far  sad,  that  at 
the  end  of  the  season,  Lavinia  Fenton,  after  two 
benefits,  was  taken  off  the  stage  by  the  Duke  of 
Bolton.  The  latter  had  from  his  wedding-day  hated 
his  wife,  daughter  and  sole  heiress  of  the  Earl  of 
Carbery ;  but  his  love  for  Lavinia  was  so  abounding 
that,  on  his  wife's  death,  he  made  a  duchess  of 
"  Polly ; "  but  their  three  sons  were  not  born  at  a 
time  that  rendered  either  of  them  heir  to  the  ducal 
coronet,  which,  in  1754,  passed  to  the  duke's  brother. 
Gay's  author's  night  realised  a  gain  to  him  of  £700, 
and  enabled  him  to  dress  in  "silver  and  blue." 
While  he  is  blazing  abroad,  the  once  great  master. 
Booth,  is  slowly  dying  out.  Let  us  tell  his  varied 
story  as  his  life  ebbs  surely  away. 


CHAPTER   XVIII. 

BARTON  BOOTH 

At  this  period  it  was  evident  that  the  stage  was 
about  to  lose  its  greatest  tragedian  since  the  death  of 
Betterton.  Booth  was  stricken  past  recovery,  and 
all  the  mirth  caused  by  the  "  Beggar's  Opera  "  could 
not  make  his  own  peculiar  public  forget  him. 
Scarcely  eight  and  thirty  years  had  elapsed  since  the 
time  when,  in  1 690,  a  handsome,  well-bred  lad,  whose 
age  did  not  then  amount  to  two  lustres,  sought  ad- 
mission into  Westminster  School.  Doctor  Busby 
thought  him  too  yOung;  but  young  Barton  Booth 
was  the  son  of  a  gentleman,  was  of  the  family  of 
Booth,  Earl  of  Warrington,  and  was  a  remarkably 
clever  and  attractive  boy.  The  doctor,  whose  acting 
had  been  commended  by  Charles  I.,  perhaps  thought 
of  the  school  plays,  and  recognised  in  little  Barton 
the  promise  of  a  lover  in  Terence's  comedies.  At 
all  events,  he  admitted  the  applicant. 

Barton  Booth,  a  younger  son  of  a  Lancashire  sire, 
was  destined  for  Holy  Orders.  He  was  a  fine  elocu- 
tionist, and  he  took  to  Latin  as  readily  as  Erasmus ; 
but  then  he  had  Nicholas  Rowe  for  a  schoolfellow ; 
and,  one  day,  was  cast  for  Pamphilus  in  the  "  Andria." 
Luckily,  or  unluckily,  he  played  this  prototype  of 

363 


364  THEIR  AlAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

young  Bevil  in  Steele's  "  Conscious  Lovers "  with 
such  ease,  perfection,  and  charming  intelligence,  that 
the  old  dormitory  shook  with  plaudits.  The  shouts 
of  approbation  changed  the  whole  purpose  of  his 
sire ;  they  deprived  the  Church  of  a  graceful  clergy- 
man, and  gave  to  the  stage  one  of  the  most  celebrated 
of  our  actors. 

He  was  but  seventeen,  when  his  brilliant  folly  led 
him  to  run  away  from  home,  and  tempt  fortune,  by 
playing  Oronooko  in  Dublin.  The  Irish  audiences 
confirmed  the  judgment  of  the  Westminster  critics, 
and  the  intelligent  lad  moved  the  hands  of  the  men 
and  the  hearts  of  the  women,  without  a  check,  during 
a  glorious  three  years  of  probation.  And  yet  he 
narrowly  escaped  failure,  through  a  ridiculous  acci- 
dent, when,  in  1698,  he  made  his  d^but  as  Oronooko. 
It  was  a  sultry  night  in  June.  While  waiting  to  go 
on,  before  his  last  scene,  he  inadvertently  wiped  his 
darkened  face,  and  the  lampblack  thereon  came  off 
in  streaks.  On  entering  on  the  stage,  unconscious 
of  the  countenance  he  presented,  he  was  saluted  with 
a  roar  of  laughter,  and  became  much  confused.  The 
generous  laughers  then  sustained  him  by  loud  applause. 
But  Booth  was  disturbed  by  this  accident,  and  to 
obviate  its  repetition,  he  went  on  the  next  night  in 
a  crape  mask,  made  by  an  actress  to  fit  close  to  his 
face.  Unfortunately,  in  the  first  scene  the  mask 
slipped,  and  the  new  audience  was  as  hilarious  as 
the  old.  "  I  looked  like  a  magpie,"  said  Barton ; 
"  but  they  lampblacked  me  for  the  rest  of  the  night, 
and  I  was  flayed  before  I  could  get  it  off  again." 
The  mishap  of  the  first  night  did  not  affect  his  tri- 
umph ;    this   was   so  complete,  that  Ashbury,   the 


BARTON  BOOTH  365 

"  master,"  made  him  a  present  of  five  guineas  ;  bright 
forerunners  of  the  fifty  that  were  to  be  placed  in  his 
hands  by  delighted  Bolingbroke. 

The  hitherto  penniless  player  was  now  fairly  on 
the  first  step  of  the  ascent  it  was  his  to  accomplish. 
When  he  subsequently  passed  through  Lancashire  to 
London,  in  1701,  his  fame  had  gone  before  him ;  he 
reached  the  capital  with  his  manly  beauty  to  gain 
him  additional  favour,  with  a  heavy  purse,  and  a 
steady  conviction  of  even  better  fortune  to  come. 
With  such  a  personage,  his  hitherto  angry  kinsmen 
were,  of  course,  reconciled  forthwith. 

One  morning  early  in  that  year,  1 701,  he  might 
have  been  seen  leaving  Lord  Fitzharding's  rooms  at 
St.  James's,  with  Bowman,  the  player,  and  making 
his  way  to  Betterton's  house  in  Great  Russell  Street. 
From  the  lord  in  waiting  to  Prince  George  of  Den- 
mark, he  carries  a  letter  of  recommendation  to  the 
father  of  the  stage ;  and  generous  old  Thomas,  jeal- 
ous of  no  rival,  depredator  of  no  talent,  gave  the 
stranger  a  hearty  welcome ;  heard  his  story,  asked 
for  a  taste  of  his  quality,  imparted  good  counsel,  took 
him  into  training,  and  ultimately  brought  him  out  at 
Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  1701,  as  Maximus,  in  Roches- 
ter's "Valentinian."  Betterton  played  Atius,  and 
Mrs.  Barry,  Lucina.  These  two  alone  were  enough 
to  daunt  so  young  an  actor ;  but  Booth  was  not  vain 
enough  to  be  too  modest,  and  the  public  at  once 
hailed  in  him  a  new  charmer.  His  ease,  grace,  fire, 
and  the  peculiar  harmony  of  his  voice,  altogether  dis- 
tinct from  that  of  Betterton's,  created  a  great  im- 
pression. "  Booth  with  the  silver  tongue,"  gained 
the   epithet  before   Barry  was   bom.     Westminster 


366  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

subsequently  celebrated  him  in  one  of  her  school 
prologues : 

'«  Old  Roscius  to  our  Booth  must  bow, — 
'Twas  then  but  art,  'tis  nature  now." 

And  the  district  was  proud  of  both  players :  of  the 
young  one  of  gentle  blood,  educated  in  St.  Peter's 
College ;  and  of  the  old  one,  the  royal  cook's  son, 
who  was  christened  in   St.  Margaret's,  August   I2, 

1635. 

At  first,  Booth  was  thought  of  as  a  promising 
undergraduate  of  the  buskin,  and  he  had  faults  to 
amend.  He  confessed  to  Gibber  that  '•  he  had  been 
for  some  time  too  frank  a  lover  of  the  bottle ; "  but 
having  the  tipsiness  of  Powell  ever  before  him  as  a 
terrible  warning,  he  made  a  resolution  of  maintaining 
a  sobriety  of  character,  from  which  he  never  departed. 
Gibber  pronounces  this  to  be  "an  uncommon  act  of 
philosophy  in  a  young  man  ; "  but  he  adds,  that  "in 
his  fame  and  fortune  he  afterward  enjoyed  the  reward 
and  benefit." 

For  a  few  years,  then.  Booth  had  arduous  work  to 
go  through,  and  every  sort  of  "business"  to  play. 
The  House  in  the  Fields,  too,  suffered  from  the 
tumblers,  dancers,  and  sagacious  animals,  added  to 
the  ordinary  and  well-acted  plays  at  the  House  in 
the  Lane.  Leisure  he  had  also,  amid  all  his  labour, 
to  pay  successful  suit  to  a  young  lady,  the  daughter 
of  a  Norfolk  baronet.  Sir  William  Barkham,  whom  he 
married  in  1704.  The  lady  died  childless  six  years 
later.  Till  this  last  period  —  that,  too,  of  the  death 
of  Betterton  —  Booth  may  be  said  to  have  been  in 
his  minority  as  an  actor,  or,  as  Gibber  puts  it,  "  only 


BARTON  BOOTH  367 

in  the  promise  of  that  reputation,"  which  he  soon 
after  happily  arrived  at.  Not  that  when  that  was 
gained  he  deemed  himself  perfect.  The  longest  life, 
he  used  to  say,  was  not  long  enough  to  enable  an 
actor  to  be  perfect  in  his  art. 

Previous  to  17 10  he  had  created  many  new  char- 
acters ;  among  others,  Dick,  in  the  "  Confederacy  ; " 
and  he  had  played  the  Ghost  in  "  Hamlet,"  with  such 
extraordinary  power,  such  a  supernatural  effect,  so 
solemn,  so  majestic,  and  so  affecting,  that  it  was  only 
second  in  attraction  to  the  Dane  of  Betterton.  But 
Pyrrhus  and  Cato  were  yet  to  come.  Meanwhile, 
soon  after  his  wife's  death,  he  played  Captain  Worthy, 
in  the  "Fair  Quaker  of  Deal,"  to  the  Dorcas  Zeal  of 
Miss  Santlow,  destined  to  be  his  second  wife  —  but 
not  just  yet. 

The  two  great  characters  created  by  him,  between 
the  year  when  he  played  with  Miss  Santlow  in  Charles 
Shadwell's  comedy,  and  that  in  which  he  married  her, 
were  Pyrrhus,  in  the  "Distressed  Mother"  (17 12), 
and  "Cato"  (17 13).  Within  the  limits  stated.  Booth 
kept  household  with  poor  Susan  Mountfort,  the 
daughter  of  the  abler  actress  of  that  name.  At  such 
arrangements  society  took  small  objection,  and  beyond 
the  fact,  there  was  nothing  to  carp  at  in  Barton's 
home.  The  latter  was  broken  up,  however,  —  the 
lady  being  in  fault,  in  1 7 1 8,  —  when  Booth,  who  had 
been  the  faithful  steward  of  Susan's  savings,  con- 
signed to  her  ;^3,20O,  which  were  speedily  squan- 
dered by  her  next  "friend,"  Mr.  Minshull.  The 
hapless  young  creature  became  insane ;  in  which 
condition  it  is  credibly  asserted  that  she  one  night 
went  through  the  part  of  Ophelia,  with  a  melancholy 


368  THEIR  MAJESTIES'   SERVANTS 

wildness  which  rendered  many  of  her  hearers  almost 
as  distraught  as  herself ;  soon  after  which  she  died. 
Meanwhile,  her  more  faithful  friend,  the  acknowl- 
edged successor  of  Betterton,  achieved  his  two  great- 
est triumphs  —  in  characters  originally  represented 
by  him  —  Pyrrhus  and  Cato.  Those  who  have 
experienced  the  affliction  of  seeing  or  reading  the 
"  Distressed  Mother,"  may  remember  that  the  heavi- 
est part  in  that  heavy  play  is  that  of  Pyrrhus.  But 
in  acting  it.  Booth  set  the  Orestes  of  less  careful 
Powell  in  the  shade.  "  His  entrance,"  says  Victor, 
"  his  walking  and  mounting  to  the  throne,  his  sitting 
down,  his  manner  of  giving  audience  to  the  ambas- 
sador, his  rising  from  the  throne,  his  descending  and 
leaving  the  stage,  —  though  circumstances  of  a  very 
common  character  in  theatrical  performances,  yet 
were  executed  by  him  with  a  grandeur  not  to  be 
described." 

But  it  is  with  "Cato"  that  Booth  is  identified. 
Fortunate  it  was  for  him  that  the  play  Addison  had 
kept  so  long  in  his  desk  was  not  printed,  according 
to  Pope's  advice,  for  readers  only.  Fortunate,  too, 
was  the  actor  in  the  political  coincidences  of  the  time. 
Marlborough,  now  a  Whig,  had  asked  to  be  appointed 
"commander-in-chief  for  life."  Harley,  Bolingbroke, 
and  the  other  Tories  described  this  as  an  attempt  to 
establish  a  perpetual  dictatorship.  The  action  and 
the  sentiment  of  "  Cato  "  are  antagonistic  to  such  an 
attempt,  and  the  play  had  a  present  political,  as  well 
as  a  great  dramatic,  interest.  Common  consent  gave 
the  part  of  the  philosopher  of  Utica  to  Booth  ;  Addi- 
son named  young  Ryan,  son  of  a  Westminster  tailor, 
as  Marcus,  and  the  young  fellow  justified  the  nomina- 


BARTON  BOOTH  369 

tion.  Wilks,  Gibber,  and  Mrs.  Oldfield  filled  the 
other  principal  parts.  Addison  surrendered  all  claim 
to  profit,  and  on  the  evening  of  April  14,  171 3,  there 
was  excitement  and  expectation  on  both  sides  of  the 
curtain. 

Booth  really  surpassed  himself ;  his  dignity,  pathos, 
energy,  were  all  worthy  of  Betterton,  and  yet  were  in 
nowise  after  the  old  actor's  manner.  The  latter  was 
forgotten  on  this  night,  and  Booth  occupied  exclu- 
sively the  public  eye,  ear,  and  heart.  The  public 
judgment  answered  to  the  public  feeling.  The  Tories 
applauded  every  line  in  favour  of  popular  liberty,  and 
the  Whigs  sent  forth  responsive  peals  to  show  that 
they,  too,  were  advocates  of  popular  freedom.  The 
pit  was  in  a  whirlwind  of  delicious  agitation,  and  the 
Tory  occupants  of  the  boxes  were  so  affected  by 
the  acting  of  Booth,  that  Bolingbroke,  when  the  play 
was  over,  sent  for  the  now  greatest  actor  of  the 
day,  and  presented  him  with  a  purse  containing  fifty 
guineas,  the  contributions  of  gentlemen  who  had 
experienced  the  greatest  delight  at  the  energy  with 
which  he  had  resisted  a  perpetual  dictatorship,  and 
maintained  the  cause  of  public  liberty !  The  mana- 
gers paid  the  actor  a  similar  pecuniary  compliment, 
and  for  five  and  thirty  consecutive  nights  "  Cato  " 
filled  Drury  Lane,  and  swelled  the  triumph  of  Barton 
Booth.  There  was  no  longer  anything  sad  in  the  old 
exclamation  of  Steele,  "  Ye  gods  !  what  a  part  would 
Betterton  make  of  Cato ! "  The  managers,  Wilks, 
Cibber,  and  Doggett,  were  as  satisfied  as  the  public, 
for  the  share  of  profit  to  each  at  the  end  of  this  event- 
ful season  amounted  to  ;^i,3So! 

When  Booth  and  his  fellow  actors,  after  the  close 


37®  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

of  the  London  season,  went  to  Oxford,  to  play 
"Cato,"  before  a  learned  and  critical  audience,  "our 
house  was  in  a  manner  invested,  and  entrance  de- 
manded by  twelve  o'clock  at  noon ;  and  before  one, 
it  was  not  vdde  enough  for  many  who  came  too  late 
for  places.  The  same  crowds  continued  for  three 
days  together  (an  uncommon  curiosity  in  that  place), 
and  the  death  of  Cato  triumphed  over  the  injuries  of 
Caesar  everywhere.  At  our  taking  leave,  we  had  the 
thanks  of  the  vice-chancellor,  'for  the  decency  and 
order  observed  by  our  whole  society ; '  an  honour," 
adds  Cibber,  proudly,  "which  had  not  always  been 
paid  on  the  same  occasion."  Four  hundred  and  fifty 
pounds  clear  profit  were  shared  by  the  managers,  who 
gave  the  actors  double  pay,  and  sent  a  contribution  of 
jC$o  toward  the  repairs  of  St.  Mary's  Church. 

The  Church,  of  which  Booth  was  intended  to  be 
a  minister,  added  its  approbation,  through  Doctor 
Smalridge,  Dean  of  Carlisle,  who  was  present  at  the 
performance  in  Oxford.  "  I  heartily  wish  all  dis- 
courses from  the  pulpit  were  as  instructive  and  edi- 
fying, as  pathetic  and  affecting,  as  that  which  the 
audience  was  then  entertained  with  from  the  stage." 
This  is  a  reproach  to  Church-preachers  at  the  cost 
of  a  compliment  to  Booth  ;  and  old  Compton,  ex- 
dragoon,  and  now  dying  Bishop  of  London,  would 
not  have  relished  it.  Some  of  the  metropolitan  pul- 
pits were,  no  doubt,  less  "  entertaining "  than  the 
stage,  but  many  of  them  were  held  to  good  purpose ; 
and,  as  for  the  Nonconformist  chapels,  of  which 
Smalridge  knew  nothing,  —  there,  enthusiastic  Pom- 
fret  and  Matthew  Clarke  were  drawing  as  great 
crowds  as  Booth ;   Bradbury,  that   cheerful-TPinded 


BARTON  BOOTH  371 

patriarch  of  the  Dissenters,  was  even  more  enter- 
taining; while  Neale  was  pathetic  and  earnest  in 
Aldersgate  Street ;  and  John  Gale,  affecting  and 
zealous,  amid  his  eager  hearers  in  Barbican,  There 
is  no  greater  mistake  than  in  supposing  that  at  this 
time  the  whole  London  world  was  engaged  in  resort- 
ing exclusively  to  the  theatres,  and  especially  to 
behold  Booth  in  "  Cato." 

The  grandeur  of  this  piece  has  become  somewhat 
dulled,  but  it  contains  more  true  sayings  constantly 
quoted  than  any  other  English  work,  save  Gray's 
"  Elegy."  It  has  been  translated  into  French,  Italian, 
Latin,  and  Russian,  and  has  been  played  in  Italy  and 
in  the  Jesuits'  College  at  St.  Omer.  Pope  adorned 
it  with  a  prologue ;  Doctor  Garth  trimmed  it  with  an 
epilogue ;  dozens  of  poets  wrote  testimonial  verses ; 
tippling  Eusden  gave  it  his  solemn  sanction,  while 
Dennis,  with  some  "  horseplay  raillery,"  but  with 
irrefutable  argument,  inexorably  proved  that,  despite 
beauties  of  diction,  it  is  one  of  the  most  absurd,  incon- 
sistent, and  unnatural  plays  ever  conceived  by  poet. 
But,  Johnson  remarks  truly,  "  as  we  love  better  to  be 
pleased  than  to  be  taught,  *  Cato'  is  read,  and  the  critic 
is  neglected." 

Booth  reaped  no  brighter  triumph  than  in  this 
character,  in  which  he  has  had  worthy,  but  never 
equally  able  successors.  Boheme  was  respectable  in 
it ;  Quin  imposing,  and  generally  successful ;  Sheri- 
dan, conventional,  but  grandly  eloquent ;  Mossop, 
heavy;  Walker,  a  failure;  Digges,  stagy;  Kemble, 
next  to  the  original ;  Pope,  "  mouthy  ;  "  Cooke,  alto- 
gether out  of  his  line ;  Wright,  weak ;  Young,  tra- 
ditional but   effective;   and   Vandenhoff,  classically 


372  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

correct  and  statuesque.  In  Cato,  the  name  of 
Booth  stands  supreme ;  in  that,  the  kinsman  of  the 
Earls  of  Warrington  was  never  equalled.  It  was  his 
good  fortune,  too,  not  to  be  admired  less  because  of 
the  affection  for  Betterton  in  the  hearts  of  surviving 
admirers.     This  is  manifest  from  the  lines  of  Pope : 

••  On  Avon's  bank  where  flowers  eternal  blow, 
If  I  but  ask,  —  if  any  weed  can  grow  ?  — 
One  tragic  sentence  if  I  dare  deride, 
Which  Betterton's  grave  action  dignified, 
Or  well-mouthed  Booth  with  emphasis  proclaims 
(Though  but  perhaps  a  muster-roll  of  names), 
How  will  our  fathers  rise  up  in  a  rage, 
And  swear  all  shame  is  lost  in  George's  age !  '* 

The  performance  of  "  Cato  "  raised  Booth  to  fortune 
as  well  as  to  fame ;  and  through  Bolingbroke  he  was 
appointed  to  a  share  in  the  profits  of  the  management 
of  Drury  Lane,  with  Cibber,  Wilks,  and  Doggett. 
The  last  named,  thereupon,  retired  in  disgust,  with 
compensation ;  and  Cibber  hints  that  Booth  owed  his 
promotion  as  much  to  his  Tory  sentiments  as  to 
his  merits  in  acting  Cato.  The  new  partner  had 
to  pay  j£6oo  for  his  share  of  the  stock  property, 
"  which  was  to  be  paid  by  such  sums  as  should  arise 
from  half  his  profits  of  acting,  till  the  whole  was 
discharged."  This  incumbrance  upon  his  share  he 
discharged  out  of  the  income  he  received  in  the  first 
year  of  his  joint  management. 

His  fame,  however,  by  this  time  had  culminated. 
He  sustained  it  well,  but  he  cannot  be  said  to  have 
increased  it.  No  other  such  a  creation  as  "  Cato  "  fell 
to  his  lot.    Younjg  and  Thomson  could  not  serve  bini 


BARTON  BOOTH  373 

as  Addison  and  opportunity  had  done,  and  if  he  can 
be  said  to  have  won  additional  laurels  after  "  Cato,"  it 
was  in  the  season  of  1722-23,  when  he  played  Young 
Bevil,  in  Steele's  "  Conscious  Lovers,"  with  a  success 
which  belied  the  assertion  that  he  was  inefficient  in 
genteel  comedy.  The  season  of  1725-26  was  also 
one  of  his  most  brilliant. 

Meanwhile,  a  success  off  the  stage  secured  him  as 
much  happiness  as,  on  it,  he  had  acquired  wealth 
and  reputation.  The  home  he  had  kept  with  Susan 
Mountfort  was  broken  up.  In  the  course  of  this 
"intimate  alliance  of  strict  friendship,"  as  the  moral 
cuphuists  called  it,  Booth  had  acted  with  remarkable 
generosity  toward  the  lady.  In  the  year  1714,  they 
bought  several  tickets  in  the  State  Lottery,  and 
agreed  to  share  equally  whatever  fortune  might 
ensue.  Booth  gained  nothing ;  the  lady  won  a  prize 
of  ;^5,ooo,  and  kept  it.  His  friends  counselled  him 
to  claim  half  the  sum,  but  he  laughingly  remarked 
that  there  had  never  been  any  but  a  verbal  agreement 
on  the  matter ;  and  since  the  result  had  been  fortunate 
for  his  friend,  she  should  enjoy  it  all. 

A  truer  friend  he  found  in  Miss  Santlow,  the 
"Santlow  famed  for  dance,"  of  Gay.  From  the 
ballet  she  had  passed  to  the  dignity  of  an  actress, 
and  Booth  had  been  enamoured  of  her  "poetry  of 
motion  "  before  he  had  played  Worthy  to  her  Dorcas 
Zeal.  He  described  her,  with  all  due  ardour,  in  an 
"  Ode  on  Mira,  Dancing,"  —  as  resembling  Venus  in 
shape,  air,  mien,  and  eyes,  and  striking  a  whole  thea- 
tre with  love,  when  alone  she  filled  the  spacious 
scene.  Thus  was  Miss  Santlow  m  the  popular 
Cato's  eyes : 


374  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

"  Whether  her  easy  body  bend, 

Or  her  fair  bosom  heave  with  sighs; 
Whether  her  graceful  arms  extend, 

Or  gently  fall,  or  slowly  rise, 
Or  returning,  or  advancing  ; 
Swimming  round,  or  side-long  glancing ; 
Gods,  how  divine  an  air 
Harmonious  gesture  gives  the  fair ! " 

Her  grace  of  motion  effected  more  than  eloquence, 
at  least  so  Booth  thought,  who  thus  sang  the  nymph 
in  her  more  accelerated  steps  to  conquest : 

"  But  now  the  flying  fingers  strike  the  lyre, 

The  sprightly  notes  the  nymph  inspire. 

She  whirls  around !  she  bounds !  she  springs ! 

As  if  Jove's  messenger  had  lent  her  wings. 
SuchJ Daphne  was  ... 
Such  were  her  lovely  limbs,  so  flushed  her  charming  face! 

So  round  her  neck  !  her  eyes  so  fair! 
So  rose  her  swelling  chest !  so  flow'd  her  amber  hair  ! 

While  her  swift  feet  outstript  the  wind, 
And  left  the  enamour'd  God  of  Day  behind." 

Now,  this  goddess  became  to  Booth  one  of  the 
truest,  most  charming,  and  most  unselfish  of  mortal 
wives.  But  see  of  what  perilous  stuff  she  was  made 
who  enraptured  the  generally  unruffled  poet  Thom- 
son almost  as  much  as  she  did  Barton  Booth.  For 
her  smiles,  Marlborough  had  given  what  he  least 
cared  to  part  with,  —  gold,  Craggs,  the  secretary 
of  state,  albeit  a  barber's  son,  had  made  her  spouse, 
in  all  but  name,  and  their  daughter  was  mother  to 
the  first  Lord  St.  Germains,  and,  by  a  second  mar- 
riage, of  the  first  Marquis  of  Abercorn.  The  Sant- 
low   blood   thus   danced   itself    into   very   excellent 


BARTON  BOOTH  375 

company ;  but  the  aristocracy  gave  good  blood  to 
the  stage,  as  well  as  took  gay  blood  from  it.  Con- 
temporary with  Booth  and  Mrs.  Santlow  were  the 
sisters,  frolic  Mrs.  Bicknell  and  Mrs.  Younger.  They 
were  nearly  related  to  Keith,  Earl  Marshal  of  Scot- 
land. Their  father  had  served  in  Flanders  under 
King  William,  "  perhaps,"  says  Mr.  Carruthers,  in 
his  "Life  of  Pope,"  "rode  by  the  side  of  Steele, 
whence  Steele's  interest  in  Mrs.  Bicknell,  whom  he 
praises  in  the  Tatler  d^nd  Spectator.''  Mrs.  Younger, 
in  middle  age,  married  John,  brother  of  the  seventh 
Earl  of  Winchelsea. 

When  Miss  Santlow  left  the  ballet  for  comedy, 
it  was  accounted  one  of  the  lucky  incidents  in  the 
fortune  of  Drury.  Dorcas  Zeal,  in  the  '*  Fair  Quaker 
of  Deal,"  was  the  first  original  part  in  which  Miss 
Santlow  appeared.  Gibber  says,  somewhat  equivo- 
cally, "  that  she  was  then  in  the  full  bloom  of  what 
beauty  she  might  pretend  to,"  and  he,  not  very 
logically,  adds,  that  her  reception  as  an  actress  was, 
perhaps,  owing  to  the  admiration  she  had  excited  as 
a  dancer.  The  part  was  suited  to  her  figure  and 
capacity.  "The  gentle  softness  of  her  voice,  the 
composed  innocence  of  her  aspect,  the  modesty  of 
her  dress,  the  reserved  decency  of  her  gesture,  and 
the  simplicity  of  the  sentiments  that  naturally  fell 
from  her,  made  her  seem  the  amiable  maid  she 
represented." 

Many  admirers,  however,  regretted  that  she  had 
abandoned  the  ballet  for  the  drama.  They  mourned 
as  if  Terpsichore  herself  had  been  on  earth  to  charm 
mankind,  and  had  gone  never  to  return.  They 
remembered,  longed  for,  and  now  longed  in  vain  for, 


376  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

that  sight  which  used  to  set  a  whole  audience  half 
distraught  with  delight,  when  in  the  very  ecstasy  of 
her  dance,  Santlow  contrived  to  loosen  her  cluster- 
ing auburn  hair,  and  letting  it  fall  about  such  a 
neck  and  shoulders  as  Praxiteles  could  more  readily 
imagine  than  imitate,  danced  on,  the  locks  flying  in 
the  air,  and  half  a  dozen  hearts  at  the  end  of  every 
one  of  them. 

The  union  of  Booth  and  Miss  Santlow  was  as 
productive  of  happiness  as  that  of  Betterton  and 
Miss  Saunderson.  Indeed,  with  some  few  excep- 
tions, the  marriages  of  English  players  have  been 
generally  so.  As  much,  perhaps,  can  hardly  be  said 
of  the  alliances  of  French  actors.  Moli^re  had  but 
a  miserable  time  of  it  with  Mile.  B^jart ;  but 
he  revenged  himself  by  producing  domestic  inci- 
dents of  a  stormy  and  aggravating  nature  on  the 
stage.  The  status  of  the  French  players  was  even 
lower,  in  one  respect,  than  that  of  their  English 
brethren.  The  French  ecclesiastical  law  did  not 
allow  of  marrying  or  giving  in  marriage  amongst 
actors.  They  were  excommunicated,  by  the  mere 
fact  that  they  were  stage-players.  The  Church 
refused  them  the  sacrament  of  marriage,  and  a  loving 
couple  who  desired  to  be  honestly  wed,  were  driven 
into  lying.  It  was  their  habit  to  retire  from  their 
profession,  get  married  as  individuals  who  had  no 
vocation,  and,  the  honeymoon  over,  to  return  again 
to  the  stage  and  their  impatient  public.  The  Church 
was  aware  of  the  subterfuge,  and  did  its  utmost  to 
establish  the  concubinage  of  parties  thus  united  ;  but 
civil  law  and  royal  influence  invariably  declared  that 
these  marriages  were  valid,  seeing  that  the  contract- 


BARTON  BOOTH  37; 

ing  parties  were  not  excommunicated  actors  when 
the  ceremony  was  performed,  whatever  they  may 
have  been  a  month  before,  or  a  month  after. 

No  such  difficulties  as  these  had  to  be  encountered 
by  Booth  and  Miss  Santlow ;  and  the  former  lost 
no  opportunity  to  render  justice  to  the  excellence  of 
his  wife.  This  actor's  leisure  was  a  learned  leisure. 
Once,  in  his  poetic  vein,  when  turning  an  ode  of  his 
favourite  "  Horace "  into  English,  he  went  into  an 
original  digression  on  the  becomingness  of  a  mar- 
ried life,  and  the  peculiar  felicity  it  had  brought  to 
himself.  Thus  sang  the  Benedick  when  the  union 
was  a  few  brief  years  old  : 

"  Happy  the  hour  when  first  our  souls  were  joined  t 
The  social  virtues  and  the  cheerful  mind 
Have  ever  crowned  our  days,  beguiled  our  pain; 
Strangers  to  discord  and  her  clamorous  train. 
Connubial  friendship,  hail !  but  haste  away, 
The  lark  and  nightingale  reproach  thy  stayj 
From  splendid  theatres  to  rural  scenes, 
Joyous  retire  !  so  bounteous  Heav'n  ordains. 
There  we  may  dwell  in  peace. 
There  bless  the  rising  morn,  and  flow'ry  field, 
Charm'd  with  the  guiltless  sports  the  woods  and  waters 
yield." 

But  neither  the  married  nor  the  professional  life 
of  Booth  was  destined  to  be  of  long  continuance. 
His  health  began  to  give  way  before  he  was  forty. 
The  managers  hoped  they  had  found  a  fair  substi- 
tute for  him  in  the  actor  Elrington.  Tom  Elrington 
subsequently  became  so  great  a  favourite  with  the 
Dublin  audience  that  they  remembered  his  Bajazet 
as  preferable  to  that  of  Barry  or  Mossop,  on  the 


378  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

ground  that  in  that  character  his  voice  could  be 
heard  beyond  the  BUnd  Quay,  whereas  that  of  the 
other  named  actors  was  not  audible  outside  the 
house !  Elrington  had  none  of  the  scholar-like  train- 
ing of  Booth.  He  was  originally  apprentice  to  an 
upholsterer  in  Covent  Garden,  was  wont  to  attend 
plays  unknown  to  his  master,  and  to  act  in  them 
privately,  and  with  equal  lack  of  sanction.  His 
master  was  a  vivacious  Frenchman,  who,  one  day, 
came  upon  him  as,  under  the  instruction  of  Chet- 
wood,  he  was  studying  a  part  in  some  stilted  and 
ranting  tragedy.  The  stagestruck  apprentice,  in 
his  agitation,  sewed  his  book  up  inside  the  cushion, 
on  which  he  was  at  work,  "  while  he  and  Chetwood 
exchanged  many  a  desponding  look,  and  every  stitch 
went  to  both  their  hearts."  The  offenders  escaped 
detection ;  but  on  another  occasion  the  Frenchman 
came  upon  his  apprentice  as  he  was  enacting  the 
Ghost  in  **  Hamlet,"  when  he  laid  the  spirit  with 
irresistible  effect  of  his  good  right  arm.  Elrington 
was,  from  the  beginning,  a  sort  of  "copper  Booth." 
His  first  appearance  on  the  stage,  at  Drury  Lane, 
in  1709,  was  in  Oronooko,  the  character  in  which 
Booth  had  made  his  coup  d'essai  in  Dublin.  He  was 
ambitious,  too,  and  had  influential  support.  When 
Gibber  refused  to  allow  him  to  play  Torrismond, 
while  Elrington  was  yet  young,  a  noble  friend  of 
the  actor  asked  the  manager  to  assign  cause  for  the 
refusal.  Colley  was  not  at  a  loss.  "  It  is  not  with 
us  as  with  you,  my  lord,"  said  he;  "your  lordship 
is  sensible  that  there  is  no  difficulty  in  filling  places 
at  court,  you  cannot  be  at  a  loss  for  persons  to  act 
their  parts  there ;  but  I  assure  you,  it  is  quite  other- 


BARTON  BOOTH  379 

wise  in  our  theatrical  world.  If  we  should  invest 
people  with  characters  they  should  be  unable  to 
support,  we  should  be  undone." 

Elrington,  after  a  few  years  of  success  in  Dublin, 
boldly  attempted  to  take  rank  in  London  with  Booth 
himself.  He  began  the  attempt  in  his  favourite  part 
of  Bajazet,  Booth  playing  Tamerlane.  The  latter, 
we  are  told  by  Victor,  "being  in  full  force,  and 
perhaps  animated  by  a  spirit  of  emulation  toward 
the  new  Bajazet,  exerted  all  his  powers ;  and  Elring- 
ton owned  to  his  friends,  that  never  having  felt  the 
force  of  such  an  actor,  he  was  not  aware  that  it  was 
in  the  power  of  mortal  to  soar  so  much  above  him 
and  shrink  him  into  nothing."  Booth  was  quite 
satisfied  with  his  own  success,  for  he  complimented 
Elrington  on  his,  adding,  that  his  Bajazet  was  ten 
times  as  good  as  that  of  Mills,  who  had  pretensions 
to  play  the  character.  The  compliment  was  not 
ill-deserved :  for  Elrington  possessed  many  of  the 
natural  and  some  of  the  acquired  qualifications  of 
Booth,  whom  perhaps  he  equalled  in  Oronooko.  He 
undoubtedly  excelled  Mills  in  Zanga,  of  which  the 
latter  was  the  original  representative.  After  Doctor 
Young  had  seen  Elrington  play  it,  he  went  round, 
shook  him  cordially  by  the  hand,  thanked  him 
heartily,  and  declared  he  had  never  seen  the  part 
done  such  justice  to,  as  by  him  :  "  acknowledging, 
with  some  regret,"  says  Doctor  Lewis,  "that  Mills 
did  but  growl  and  mouth  the  character."  Such  was 
the  actor  who  became  for  a  time  Booth's  "  double," 
and  might  have  become  his  rival.  During  the  illness 
of  the  latter,  in  1728-29,  Elrington,  we  are  told,  was 
the  principal  support  of  tragedy  in  Drury  Lane.     At 


380  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

that  time,  says  Davies,  "the  managers  were  so  well- 
convinced  of  his  importance  to  them,  that  they 
offered  him  their  own  conditions,  if  he  would  engage 
with  them  for  a  term  of  years."  Elrington  replied : 
"  I  am  truly  sensible  of  the  value  of  your  offer,  but 
in  Ireland  I  am  so  well  rewarded  for  my  services, 
that  I  cannot  think  of  leaving  it,  on  any  considera- 
tion. There  is  not  a  gentleman's  house  to  which 
I  am  not  a  welcome  visitor." 

Booth  has  been  called  indolent,  but  he  never  was 
so  when  in  health  and  before  a  fitting  audience.  On 
one  thin  night,  indeed,  he  was  enacting  Othello 
rather  languidly,  but  he  suddenly  began  to  exert 
himself  to  the  utmost  in  the  great  scene  of  the  third 
act.  On  coming  off  the  stage  he  was  asked  the 
cause  of  this  sudden  effort.  "  I  saw  an  Oxford  man 
in  the  pit,"  he  answered,  "for  whose  judgment  I  had 
more  respect  than  for  that  of  the  rest  of  the  audi- 
ence ; "  and  he  played  the  Moor  to  that  one  but 
efficient  judge.  Some  causes  of  languor  may,  per- 
haps, be  traced  to  the  too  warm  patronage  he  re- 
ceived, or,  rather,  friendship,  at  the  hands  of  the 
nobility.  It  was  no  uncommon  thing  for  a  "  carriage 
and  six  "  to  be  in  waiting  for  him,  —  the  equipage  of 
some  court  friend,  —  which  conveyed  him  in  what 
was  then  considered  the  brief  period  of  three  hours 
to  Windsor,  and  back  again  the  next  day  in  time  for 
play  or  rehearsal.  This  agitated  sort  of  life  seriously 
affected  his  health,  and  on  one  occasion  his  recovery 
was  despaired  of.  But  the  public  favourite  was  re- 
stored to  the  town ;  and  learned  Mattaire  celebrated 
the  event  in  a  Latin  ode,  in  which  he  did  honour  to 
the  memory  of  Betterton  and  the  living  and  invigor> 


BARTON  BOOTH  381 

ated  genius  of  Booth.  That  genius  was  not  so  per- 
fect as  that  of  his  great  predecessor.  When  able  to 
go  to  the  theatre,  though  not  yet  able  to  perform, 
he  saw  Wilks  play  two  of  his  parts,  —  Jaffier  and 
Hastings,  —  and  heard  the  applause  which  was 
awarded  to  his  efforts  ;  and  the  sound  was  ungrate- 
ful to  the  ears  of  the  philosophical  and  unim passioned 
Cato.  But  Jaffier  was  one  of  his  triumphs ;  and  he 
whose  tenderness,  pity,  and  terror  had  touched  the 
hearts  of  the  whole  audience,  was  painfully  affected 
at  the  triumph  of  another,  though  achieved  by  differ- 
ent  means. 

One  of  the  secrets  of  his  own  success  lay,  undoubt- 
edly, in  his  education,  feeling,  and  judgment.  It  may 
be  readily  seen,  from  Aaron  Hill's  rather  elaborate 
criticism,  that  he  was  an  actor  who  made  "  points  ; " 
"he  could  soften  and  slide  over,  with  an  elegant 
negligence,  the  improprieties  of  the  part  he  acted ; 
while,  on  the  contrary,  he  could  dwell  with  energy 
upon  the  beauties,  as  if  he  exerted  a  latent  spirit, 
which  he  kept  back  for  such  an  occasion,  that  he 
might  alarm,  awaken,  and  transport  in  those  places 
only  which  were  worthy  of  his  best  exertions."  This 
was  really  to  depend  on  "points,"  and  was,  perhaps, 
a  defect  in  a  player  of  whom  it  has  been  said,  that 
"  he  had  learning  to  understand  perfectly  what  it  was 
his  part  to  speak,  and  judgment  to  know  how  it 
agreed  or  disagreed  with  his  character."  The  fol- 
lowing, by  Hill,  is  as  graphic  as  anything  in  Cibber : 
"Booth  had  a  talent  at  discovering  the  passions, 
where  they  lay  hid  in  some  celebrated  parts  by  the 
injudicious  practice  of  other  actors  ;  when  he  had 
discovered,  he  soon  grew  able  to  express  them ;  and 


382  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

his  secret  of  attaining  this  great  lesson  of  the  theatre 
was  an  adaptation  of  his  look  to  his  voice,  by  which 
artful  imitation  of  nature  the  variations  in  the  sound 
of  his  words  gave  propriety  to  every  change  in  his 
countenance.  So  that  it  was  Mr.  Booth's  peculiar 
felicity  to  be  heard  and  seen  the  same,  whether  as 
the  pleased,  the  grieved,  the  pitying,  the  reproachful, 
or  the  angry.  One  would  be  almost  tempted  to  bor- 
row the  aid  of  a  very  bold  figure,  and  to  express  this 
excellency  the  more  significantly  by  permission  to 
affirm  that  the  blind  might  have  seen  him  in  his 
voice,  and  the  deaf  have  heard  him  in  his  visage." 

In  his  later  years,  says  a  critic,  "his  merit  as  an 
actor  was  unrivalled,  and  even  so  extraordinary,  as 
to  be  almost  beyond  the  reach  of  envy."  His 
Othello,  Cato,  and  his  Polydore,  in  the  "Orphan," 
in  which  he  was  never  equalled,  were  long  the  theme 
of  admiration  to  his  survivors,  as  were  in  a  less  de- 
gree his  sorrowing  and  not  roaring  Lear,  his  manly 
yet  not  blustering  Hotspur.  Dickey  Brass  and  Dori- 
mant,  Wildair  and  Sir  Charles  Easy,  Pinchwife,  Man- 
ley,  and  Young  Bevil  were  among  the  best  of  his 
essays  in  comedy,  where,  however,  he  was  surpassed 
by  Wilks.  ♦*  But  then  I  believe,"  says  a  critic,  "  no 
one  will  say  he  did  not  appear  the  fine  gentleman  in 
the  character  of  Bevil  in  the  *  Conscious  Lovers.'  It 
is  said  that  he  once  played  Falstaff  in  the  presence 
of  Queen  Anne,  *to  the  delight  of  the  whole  audi- 
ence.' " 

Aaron  Hill,  curiously  statistical,  states  that,  by 
the  peculiar  delivery  of  certain  sentiments  in  Cato, 
Booth  was  always  sure  of  obtaining  from  eighteen  to 
twenty   rounds   of  applause  during  the  evening  — 


BARTON  BOOTH  383 

marks  of  approval  both  of  matter  and  manner.  Like 
Bettetton,  he  abounded  in  feeling.  There  was  noth- 
ing of  the  stolidity  of  "  Punch  "  in  either  of  them. 
Betterton  is  said  to  have  sometimes  turned  as  "  white 
as  his  neck-cloth  "  on  seeing  his  father's  ghost ;  while 
Booth,  when  playing  the  Ghost  to  Betterton's  Ham- 
let, was  once  so  horror-stricken  at  his  distraught 
aspect,  as  to  be  too  disconcerted  to  proceed,  for  a 
while,  in  his  part.  Either  actor,  however,  knew  how 
far  to  safely  yield  themselves  to  feeling.  Judgment 
was  always  within  call ;  the  head  ready  to  control  the 
heart,  however  wildly  it  might  be  impelled  by  the 
latter.  Baron,  the  French  actor,  did  not  know  bet- 
ter than  they  that,  while  rules  may  teach  the  actor 
not  to  raise  his  arms  above  his  head,  he  will  do  well 
to  break  the  rule  if  passion  carry  him  that  way. 
**  Passion,"  as  Baron  remarked,  **  knows  more  than 
art." 

I  have  noticed  the  report  that  Booth  and  Wilks 
were  jealous  of  each  other ;  I  think  there  was  more 
of  emulation  than  of  envy  between  them.  Booth 
could  make  sacrifices  in  favour  of  young  actors  as 
unreservedly  as  Betterton.  I  find,  even  when  he 
was  in  possession,  as  it  was  called,  of  all  the  leading 
parts,  that  he  as  often  played  Laertes,  or  even  Hora- 
tio, as  the  Ghost  or  Hamlet.  His  Laertes  was  won- 
derfully fine,  and,  in  a  great  actor's  hands,  may  be 
made,  in  the  fifth  act  at  least,  equal  with  the  princely 
Dane  himself.  Again,  although  his  Othello  was  one 
of  his  grandest  impersonations,  he  would  take  Cassio 
in  order  to  give  an  aspirant  a  chance  of  triumph  in 
the  Moor.  In  "  Macbeth,"  Booth  played,  one  night, 
the  hero  of  the  piece,  on  another,  Ban  quo,  and  on  a 


384  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

third  the  little  part  of  Lennox.  He  was  quite  con- 
tent that  Cibber  should  play  Wolsey  while  he  capti- 
vated the  audience  by  enacting  the  king.  His 
Henry  was  a  mixture  of  frank  humour,  dignity,  and 
sternness.  Theophilus  Cibber  says  enough  to  con- 
vince us  that  Booth,  in  the  king,  could  be  familiar 
without  being  vulgar,  and  that  his  anger  was  of  the 
quality  that  excites  terror.  He  pronounced  the  four 
words,  "  Go  thy  ways,  Kate,"  with  such  a  happy 
emphasis  as  to  win  admiration  and  applause ;  and 
"  when  he  said,  '  Now,  to  breakfast  with  what  appe- 
tite you  may,'  his  expression  was  rapid  and  v^ehe- 
ment,  and  his  look  tremendous," 

The  credit  attached  to  the  acting  of  inferior  parts 
by  leading  players  was  shared  with  Booth  by  Wilks 
and  Cibber,  Of  the  latter,  his  son  says  that,  "  though 
justly  esteemed  the  first  comedian  of  his  time,  and 
superior  to  all  we  have  since  beheld,  he  has  played 
several  parts,  to  keep  up  the  spirit  of  some  comedies, 
which  you  will  now  scarcely  find  one  player  in  twenty 
who  will  not  reject  as  beneath  his  Mock-Excellence," 

Booth  could,  after  all,  perhaps,  occasionally  be  lan- 
guid without  the  excuse  of  illness.  He  would  play 
his  best  to  a  single  man  in  the  pit  whom  he  recog- 
nised as  a  playgoer  and  a  judge  of  acting ;  but  to  an 
unappreciating  audience  he  could  exhibit  an  almost 
contemptuous  disinclination  to  exert  himself.  On 
one  occasion  of  this  sort  he  was  made  painfully  sen- 
sible of  his  mistake,  and  a  note  was  addressed  to  him 
from  the  stage-box,  the  purport  of  which  was  to  know 
whether  he  was  acting  for  his  own  diversion  or  in  the 
service  and  for  the  entertainment  of  the  public  ? 

On  another  occasion,  with  a  thin  house  and  a  cold 


BARTON  BOOTH  385 

audience,  he  was  languidly  going  through  one  of  his 
usually  grandest  impersonations,  namely,  Pyrrhus. 
At  his  very  dullest  scene  he  started  into  the  utmost 
brilliancy  and  effectiveness.  His  eye  had  just  previ- 
ously detected  in  the  pit  a  gentleman  named  Stan- 
yan,  the  friend  of  Addison  and  Steele  and  the 
correspondent  of  the  Earl  of  Manchester,  Stanyan 
was  an  accomplished  man  and  a  judicious  critic. 
Booth  played  to  him  with  the  utmost  care  and 
corresponding  success.  "  No,  no !  "  he  exclaimed,  as 
he  passed  behind  the  scenes,  radiant  with  the  effect 
he  had  produced,  "  I  will  not  have  it  said  at  Button's 
that  Barton  Booth  is  losing  his  powers  !  " 

Some  indolence  was  excusable,  however,  in  actors 
who  ordinarily  laboured  as  Booth  did.  As  an  instance 
of  the  toil  which  they  had  to  endure  for  the  sake  of 
applause,  I  will  notice  that,  in  the  season  of  171 2-1 3, 
when  Booth  studied,  played,  and  triumphed  in  Cato, 
he,  within  not  many  weeks,  studied  and  performed 
five  original  and  very  varied  characters,  Cato  being 
the  last  of  a  roll  which  included  Arviragus,  in  the 
"  Successful  Pirate ; "  Captain  Stan  worth,  in  the 
"  Female  Advocates  ; "  Captain  Wildish,  in  "  Hu- 
mours of  the  Army ; "  Cinna,  in  an  adaptation  of 
Corneille's  play ;  and,  finally,  Cato. 

No  doubt  Booth  was  finest  when  put  upon  his 
mettle.  In  May,  1726,  for  instance,  Giffard  from 
Dublin  appeared  at  Drury  Lane,  as  the  Prince  of 
Wales,  in  "  Henry  IV."  The  debutant  was  known 
to  be  an  admirer  of  the  Hotspur  of  roaring  Elring- 
ton.  The  Percy  was  one  of  Booth's  most  perfect 
exhibitions ;  and  ill  as  he  was  on  the  night  he  was  to 
play  it  to  Giffard's  Harry,  he  protested  that  he  wouW 


386  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

surprise  the  newcomer,  and  the  house  too ;  and  he 
played  with  such  grace,  fire,  and  energy,  that  the 
audience  were  beside  themselves  with  ecstasy,  and 
the  new  actor  was  profuse  at  the  side  scenes,  and 
even  out  of  hearing  of  Booth,  in  acknowledgment 
of  the  great  master  and  his  superiority  over  every 
living  competitor. 

Betterton  cared  little  if  his  audience  was  select, 
provided  it  also  was  judicious ;  Booth,  however,  loved 
a  full  house,  though  he  could  play  his  best  to  a  soli- 
tary, but  competent,  individual  in  the  pit.  He  con- 
fessed that  he  considered  profit  after  fame,  and 
thought  the  large  audiences  tended  to  the  increase 
of  both.  The  intercourse  between  audience  and 
actor  was,  in  his  time,  more  intimate  and  familiar 
than  it  is  now.  Thus  we  see  Booth  entering  a 
coffee-house  in  Bow  Street,  one  morning  after  he 
had  played  Varanes,  on  the  preceding  night.  The 
gentlemen  present,  all  playgoers  as  naturally  as  they 
were  coffee-house  frequenters,  cluster  round  him  and 
acknowledge  the  pleasure  they  had  enjoyed  in  wit- 
nessing him  act.  These  pleasant  morning  critics 
only  venture  to  blame  him  for  allowing  such  un- 
meaning stuff  as  the  pantomime  of  "  Perseus  and 
Andromeda"  to  follow  the  classical  tragedy  and 
mar  its  impression.  But  the  ballet-pantomime 
draws  great  houses,  and  is,  therefore,  a  less  indig- 
nity in  Booth's  eye  than  half  empty  benches.  It 
was  not  the  business  of  managers,  he  said,  to  be 
wise  to  empty  boxes.  "There  were  many  more 
spectators,"  he  said,  "  than  men  of  taste  and  judg- 
ment ;  and  if  by  the  artifice  of  a  pantomime  they 
could  entice  a  greater  number  to  partake  of  a  good 


BARTON  BOOTH  "  387 

play  than  could  be  drawn  without  it,  he  could  not 
see  any  great  harm  in  it ;  and  that,  as  those  pieces 
were  performed  after  the  play,  they  were  no  inter- 
ruption to  it."  In  short,  he  held  pantomimes  to  be 
rank  nonsense,  which  might  be  rendered  useful,  after 
the  fashion  of  his  explanation. 

His  retirement  from  the  stage  may  be  laid  to  the 
importunity  of  Mr.  Theobald,  who  urged  him  to  act 
in  a  play,  for  a  moment  attributed  to  Shakespeare, 
"The  Double  Falsehood."  Booth  struggled  through 
the  part  of  Julio,  for  a  week,  in  the  season  of  1727-28, 
and  then  withdrew,  utterly  cast  down,  and  in  his  forty- 
sixth  year.  Broxham,  Friend,  Colebatch,  and  Mead, 
came  with  their  canes,  perukes,  pills,  and  proposals, 
and  failing  to  restore  him,  they  sent  him  away  from 
London.  The  sick  player  and  his  wife  wandered 
from  town  to  Bath,  from  the  unavailing  springs  there 
to  Ostend,  thence  to  Antwerp,  and  on  to  Holland,  to 
consult  Boerhaave,  who  could  only  tell  the  invalid 
that  in  England  a  man  should  never  leave  off  his 
winter  clothing  till  midsummer-day,  and  that  he 
should  resume  it  the  day  after.  From  Holland  the 
sad  couple  came  home  to  Hampstead,  and  ultimately 
back  to  London,  where  fever,  jaundice,  and  other 
maladies  attacked  Booth  with  intermitting  severity. 
Here,  in  May,  1733,  a  quack  doctor  persuaded  him 
that,  if  he  would  take  "crude  mercury,"  it  would  not 
only  prevent  the  return  of  his  fever,  but  effectually 
cure  him  of  all  his  complaints.  As  we  are  gravely 
informed  that  within  five  days  the  poor  victim  "  took 
within  two  ounces  of  two  pounds'  weight  of  mercury," 
we  are  not  surprised  to  hear  that  at  the  end  of  that 
time  Booth  was  in  extremis,  and  that  Sir  Hans  Sloane 


388  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

was  at  his  bedside  to  accelerate,  as  it  would  seem,  the 
catastrophe. 

To  peruse  what  followed  is  like  reading  the  details 
of  an  assassination.  As  if  the  two  pounds,  minus  two 
ounces,  of  mercury  were  not  enough,  poor  Booth  was 
bled  profusely  at  the  jugular,  his  feet  were  plastered, 
and  his  scalp  was  blistered ;  he  was  assailed  in  various 
ways  by  cathartics,  and  mocked,  I  may  so  call  it,  by 
emulsions ;  the  Daily  Post  announced  that  he  lay 
a-dying  at  his  house  in  Hart  Street ;  other  notices 
pronounced  him  moribund  in  Charles  Street ;  but  he 
was  alive  on  the  morning  of  the  loth  of  May,  1733, 
when  a  triad  of  prescriptions  being  applied  against 
him,  Cato  at  length  happily  succumbed.  But  the 
surgeons  would  not  let  the  dead  actor  rest ;  they 
opened  his  body,  and  dived  into  its  recesses,  and 
called  things  by  strong  names,  and  avoided  technical- 
ities ;  and  after  declaring  everything  to  be  very  much 
worse  than  the  state  of  Denmark,  as  briefly  described 
by  Hamlet,  Alexander  Small,  the  especial  examiner, 
signing  the  report,  added  a  postscript  thereto,  imply- 
ing that,  "  There  was  no  fault  in  any  part  of  his  body, 
but  what  is  here  mentioned."  Poor  fellow  !  We  are 
told  that  he  recovered  from  his  fever,  but  that  he 
died  of  the  jaundice,  helped,  I  think,  by  the  treatment. 

A  few  days  subsequently  the  body  was  privately 
interred  in  Cowley  Church,  near  Uxbridge,  where  he 
occasionally  resided.  A  few  old  friends,  and  some 
dearer  than  friends,  accompanied  him  to  the  grave. 
His  will  was  as  a  kiss  on  either  cheek  of  his  beautiful 
widow,  and  a  slap  on  both  cheeks  of  sundry  of  his 
relations.  To  the  former  he  left  everything  he  had 
possessed,  and  for  the  very  best  of  reasons.     "  As  I 


BARTON  BOOTH  389 

have  been,"  he  says,  "a  man  much  known  and  talked 
of,  my  not  leaving  legacies  to  my  relations  may  give 
occasion  to  censorious  people  to  reflect  upon  my  con- 
duct in  this  latter  act  of  my  life ;  therefore,  I  think  it 
necessary  to  declare  that  I  have  considered  my  cir- 
cumstances, and  finding,  upon  a  strict  examination, 
that  all  I  am  now  possessed  of  does  not  amount  to  two- 
thirds  of  the  fortune  my  wife  brought  me  on  the  day 
of  our  marriage,  together  with  the  yearly  additions 
and  advantages  since  arising  from  her  laborious  em- 
ployment on  the  stage  during  twelve  years  past,  I 
thought  myself  bound  by  honesty,  honour,  and  grati- 
tude due  to  her  constant  affection,  not  to  give  away 
any  part  of  the  remainder  of  her  fortune  at  my  death, 
having  already  bestowed,  in  free  gifts  upon  my  sister, 
Barbara  Rogers,  upward  of  ;^  1,300  out  of  my  wife's 
substance,  and  full  ^400  of  her  money  on  my  unde- 
serving brother,  George  Booth  (besides  the  gifts  they 
received  before  my  marriage),  and  all  those  benefits 
were  conferred  on  my  said  brother  and  sister,  from 
time  to  time,  at  the  earnest  solicitation  of  my  wife, 
who  was  perpetually  entreating  me  to  continue  the 
allowance  I  gave  my  relations  before  my  marriage. 
The  inhuman  return  that  has  been  made  my  wife  for 
these  obligations,  by  my  sister,  I  forbear  to  mention." 
This  was  justice  without  vengeance,  and  worthy  of 
the  sage,  of  whom  Booth  was  the  most  finished  repre- 
sentative. The  generosity  of  Hester  Santlow,  too, 
has  been  fittingly  preserved  in  the  will ;  the  whole  of 
which,  moreover,  is  a  social  illustration  of  the  times. 
In  Westminster,  "Booth  Street"  keeps  up  the 
actor's  name ;  and  "  Cowley  Street "  the  remem- 
brance of  the  proprietorship  of  a  country  estate  near 


390  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

Uxbridge.  To  pass  through  the  former  street  is  like 
being  transported  to  the  times  of  Queen  Anne.  It  is 
a  quaint  old  locality,  very  little  changed  since  the 
period  in  which  Barton  built  it.  No  great  stretch  of 
imagination  is  required  to  fancy  the  original  Pyrrhus 
and  Cato  gliding  along  the  shady  side,  with  a  smile 
on  his  lips  and  a  certain  fire  in  his  eye.  He  is  think- 
ing of  Miss  Santlow ! 

With  Booth  slowly  dying,  and  Mrs.  Oldfield  often 
too  ill  to  act,  the  prospects  of  Drury  began  to  wane  in 
1728-29.  Elrington  could  not  supply  the  place  of  the 
former ;  nor  Mrs,  Porter  and  Mrs.  Horton  combined, 
that  of  the  latter.  Gibber  carefully  instructed  his 
son  Theophilus  in  the  part  of  Pistol,  which  became 
his  one  great  part,  and  the  appearance  of  Miss  Rafter 
as  Dorinda,  in  Dryden's  version  of  the  "  Tempest," 
on  the  2d  of  January,  1 729,  marks  the  first  step  in 
the  bright  and  uncheckered  career  of  one  who  is 
better  remembered  as  Kitty  Clive,  of  whom,  more 
hereafter.  She  was  not  able  to  save  Gibber's  pas- 
toral comedy,  "  Love  in  a  Riddle,"  from  condemna- 
tion by  an  audience  who  had  the  ill  manners,  as  it 
was  considered,  to  hiss,  despite  a  royal  presence  in 
the  house. 

As  the  new  names  rose  the  old  ones  fell  off,  and 
Gongreve  and  Steele  —  the  first  rich  and  a  gentleman, 
the  second  needy,  but  a  gentleman  too  —  died  in  1729, 
leaving  no  one  but  Gibber  fit  to  compete  with  them 
in  comedy.  Musical  pieces,  such  as  the  "Village 
Opera,"  and  the  "  Lovers'  Opera,"  born  of  Gay's  suc- 
cess, brought  no  such  golden  results  to  their  authors 
or  the  house,  which  was  still  happy  in  retaining  Wilks. 


BARTON  BOOTH  391 

On  the  other  hand,  in  the  Fields,  where  ballad-opera 
had  been  a  mine  of  wealth  to  astonished  managers, 
classical  tragedy  took  the  lead,  with  Quin  leading  in 
everything,  and  growing  in  favour  with  a  town  whose 
applause  could  no  longer  be  claimed  by  Booth.  But 
classical  tragedy  reaped  no  golden  harvests.  Barford's 
"Virgin  Queen  "  lives  but  in  a  line  of  Pope  to  Ar- 
buthnot.  The  "  Themistocles "  (Quin)  of  young 
Madden,  whom  Ireland  ought  to  remember  as  one 
of  her  benefactors  who  was  no  mere  politician,  lived 
but  for  a  few  nights,  Mrs,  Heywood  succeeded  as 
ill  with  her  romantic  tragedy,  •*  Frederick,  Duke  of 
Brunswick,"  which  was  five  acts  of  flattery  to  the 
house  of  Hanover,  some  of  whose  members  yawned 
over  it,  ungratefully.  But  the  "Beggar's  Opera" 
could  always  fill  the  house  whether  Miss  Cantrell 
warbled  Polly,  with  the  old  cast,  or  children  played 
all  the  parts  —  a  foolish  novelty,  not  unattractive. 
Hawker,  an  actor,  vainly  tried  to  rival  Gay,  with  a 
serio-comic  opera,  the  "Wedding,"  and  Gay  himself 
was  doomed  to  suffer  disappointment ;  for  the  author- 
ities suppressed  his  "  Polly,"  a  vapid  continuation  of 
the  fortunes  of  Macheath  and  the  lady,  and  thereby 
drove  almost  to  the  disaffection  of  which  he  was 
accused,  not  only  Gay,  but  his  patrons,  the  Duke  and 
Duchess  of  Queensberry,  who  punished  the  court  by 
absenting  themselves  from  its  pleasures  and  duties. 
The  poet,  who  desired  nothing  but  the  joys  of  a  quiet 
life,  a  good  table,  and  a  suit  of  blue  and  silver,  all 
which  he  enjoyed  beneath  the  ducal  roof,  happiest  of 
mercer's  apprentices,  found  compensation  in  publish- 
ing his  work  by  subscription,  whereby  he  realised  so 
large  a  sum  as  to  satisfy  his  utmost  wishes. 


392  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

Drury  Lane  was  not  fortunate  in  any  of  its  new 
pieces  in  the  season  of  1729-30.  It  was,  perhaps, 
unfortunate  that  Mrs.  Oldfield,  by  her  recommenda- 
tion, and  by  her  acting,  obtained  even  partial  suc- 
cess for  a  comedy,  by  the  Rev.  James  Millar,  the 
"  Humours  of  Oxford."  This  satirical  piece  brought 
the  author  into  trouble  with  his  university,  at  some 
of  whose  members  it  was  aimed,  and  it  did  not  tend 
to  raise  him  in  the  estimation  of  his  congregation  in 
Conduit  Street. 

The  tragedy  of  •'  Timoleon "  was  ruined  by  the 
zeal  of  the  author's  friends,  who  crowded  the  house, 
and  as  loudly  applauded  the  candle-snuffers  and  fur- 
niture as  they  did  Mills  or  Mrs.  Porter.  Martyn,  the 
author,  had  been  a  linen-draper,  but  his  epitaph  in 
Lewisham  Churchyard  describes  him  as  "  one  of  the 
best  bred  men  in  England."  He  was  certainly  well 
connected,  but  he  exhibited  more  efficiency  in  colo- 
nising Georgia  than  in  writing  poetry.  His  "Timo- 
leon "  had  neither  beauty  of  style,  nor  incident. 

This  season,  too,  saw  the  first  dramatic  attempt  of 
Thomson,  in  "  Sophonisba."  Lee's  tragedy  of  that 
name  used  to  drown  the  female  part  of  the  house  in 
tears ;  but  Thomson's  could  not  stir  even  his  own 
friends  to  enthusiasm.  They  rose  from  the  full-dress 
rehearsals  to  which  they  were  invited,  dulled  in  sense 
rather  than  touched  or  elevated.  Thomson's  play  is 
far  less  tender  than  Lee's ;  his  Sophonisba  (the  last 
character  originally  played  by  Mrs.  Oldfield)  more 
stern  and  patriotic,  and  less  loving.  The  author 
himself  described  her  as  a  "female  Cato,"  and  in 
the  epilogue  not  too  delicately  indicated  that  if  the 
audience  would  only  applaud  a  native  poet,  — 


BARTON  BOOTH  393 

"  Then  other  Shakespeares  yet  may  rouse  the  stage, 
And  other  Otways  melt  another  age." 

"  Sophonisba,"  which  Thomson  was  not  afraid  to 
set  above  the  heroine  of  Corneille,  abounds  in  plati- 
tudes, and  it  was  fatal  to  Gibber,  who,  never  tolerable 
in  tragedy,  was  fairly  hissed  out  of  the  character  of 
Scipio,  which  he  surrendered  to  a  promising  player, 
Williams.  The  latter  was  violently  hissed  also  on 
the  first  night  of  his  acting  Scipio,  he  bore  so  close  a 
resemblance  to  his  predecessor.  Mrs.  Oldfield,  alone, 
made  a  sensation,  especially  in  the  delivery  of  the 
line,  — 

«•  Not  one  base  word  of  Carthage  —  on  thy  soul ! " 

Her  grandeur  of  action,  her  stem  expression,  and  her 
powerful  tone  of  voice  elicited  the  most  enthusiastic 
applause.  Exactly  two  months  later,  on  the  28th  of 
April,  1730,  she  acted  Lady  Brute,  and  therewith 
suddenly  terminated  her  thirty  years  of  service, 
dying  exactly  six  months  after  illness  compelled  her 
to  withdraw. 

Before  noticing  more  fully  the  career  of  Mrs.  Old- 
field,  let  me  record  here,  that  on  the  night  she  played 
Lady  Brute  in  the  "Provoked  Wife,"  the  part  of 
Mademoiselle  was  acted  by  Charlotte  Charke,  the 
wife  of  a  good  singer,  but  a  worthless  man,  and  the 
youngest  child  of  Colley  Gibber.  There  seems  to 
have  been  a  touch  of  insanity,  certainly  there  was  no 
power  of  self-control,  in  this  poor  woman.  From 
her  childhood  she  had  been  wild,  wayward,  and  rebel- 
lious ;  self-taught  as  a  boy  might  be,  and  with  nothing 
feminine  in  her  character  or  pursuits,     With  self- 


394  THEIR  MAJESTIES'  SERVANTS 

assertion  too,  she  was  weak  enough  to  be  won  by  a 
knave  with  a  sweet  voice,  whose  cruel  treatment 
drove  his  intractable  wife  to  the  stage,  where  she 
failed  to  profit  by  her  fine  opportunities. 

The  corresponding  season  at  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields 
was  the  usual  one  of  an  unfashionable  house ;  but 
Quin,  .Ryan,  Walker,  and  Boheme  were  actors  who 
made  way  against  Wilks,  Gibber,  Mills,  and  Bridge- 
water.  No  new  piece  of  any  value  was  produced ; 
the  only  incidents  worth  recording  being  the  playing 
of  Macheath  by  Quin,  for  his  benefit ;  and  the  sud- 
den death  of  Spiller,  stricken  by  apoplexy,  as  he  was 
playing  in  the  "  Rape  of  Proserpine."  He  was  inim- 
itable in  old  men,  though  he  himself  was  young ;  but 
whatever  he  played,  he  so  identified  himself  with  his 
character,  that  Spiller  disappeared  from  the  eyes  and 
the  thoughts  of  an  audience  unconsciously  deluded 
by  the  artist. 

As  the  town  grew,  so  also  did  theatres  increase ; 
that  in  Goodman's  Fields,  and  the  little  house  in  the 
Haymarket,  were  open  this  season.  At  the  former 
Giffard  and  his  wife  led  in  tragedy  and  comedy ;  but 
the  company  was  generally  weak.  Not  so  the  authors 
who  wrote  for  the  house.  First  among  them  was 
Fielding,  a  young  fellow  of  three  and  twenty ;  bred 
to  the  law,  but  driven  to  the  drama  by  the  inability 
of  his  father,  the  general,  to  supply  him  with  funds. 
His  first  play,  "  Love  in  Several  Masques,"  was  acted 
at  Drury  Lane  in  1728  ;  his  second,  and  a  better,  the 
"  Temple  Beau,"  was  played  at  Goodman's  Fields. 

Ralph,  who  had  been  a  schoolmaster  in  Philadel- 
phia, and  came  to  England  to  thrive  by  political, 
satirical,  or  dramatic  writings,  and  to  live  for  ever  in 


BARTON  BOOTH  395 

the  abuse  lavished  on  him  by  Pope,  supplied  a  ballad- 
opera,  the  "  Fashionable  Lady,"  which  was  intended 
to  rival  the  "  Beggar's  Opera."  To  Macheath-Walker 
is  ascribed  a  tragedy,  the  "  Fate  of  Villainy ; "  and 
Mottley,  the  disappointed  candidate  for  place,  and 
the  compiler  of  "  Joe  Miller's  Jests,"  —  Miller  being 
a  better  joker  than  he  was  an  actor,  —  wrote  for  this 
house  his  "Widow  Bewitched,"  the  last  and  poorest 
of  his  contributions  to  the  stage. 

For  the  Haymarket,  Fielding  wrote  the  only  piece 
which  has  come  down  to  our  times,  his  immortal  bur- 
lesque-tragedy of  "  Tom  Thumb,"  in  which  the  weak- 
ness and  bombast  of  late  or  contemporary  writers  are 
copied  with  wonderful  effect.  Young  suffered  severely 
by  this  ;  and  the  "  Oh,  Huncamunca !  Huncamunca, 
oh  !  "  was  a  dart  at  the  "  Oh,  Sophonisba !  Sophonisba, 
oh  !  "  of  Jamie  Thomson.  Of  the  other  pieces  I  need 
not  disturb  the  dust.  Let  me  rather,  contemplating 
that  of  Mrs.  Oldfield,  glance  at  the  career  of  that 
great  actress,  who  living  knew  no  rival,  and  in  her 
peculiar  line  has  never  been  excelled. 


END    OF    VOLUME   I. 


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